


Charybdis and Other Monsters

by paleogymnast



Series: Charybdis 'verse [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Character Study, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Survival, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When S.H.I.E.L.D. fell Clint Barton was half way around the world serving out perpetual exile mourning the loss of his husband Phil Coulson unable to forgive himself for the part he played in Phil’s death. When S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, it took with it his friends, his job, his purpose, and the last piece of family he had left. Or did it?</p><p>Alone, cut off from all support, Clint must choose to survive--or die trying--and fight his way across Asia to deliver a key piece of intel to the one friend he has left. Capture means certain death--or <i>worse</i>--and he is hunted at every turn. When Clint receives a mysterious message, is it a trap? Or will it open a door to his past he thought was closed forever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charybdis and Other Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my lovely artist [Zephre](zephre.livejournal.com) and the mods at [Marvel Bang](marvel_bang.livejournal.com) for making this possible. Thanks also to my wonderful beta Carlos. I've continued to play with this since my beta edited it, and all remaining errors are my own.
> 
> This is a story I am not sure if I will ever be _quite_ happy with and I think I want to expand some time when I have time. I feel like this is a universe and character exploration with so many options, so many side stories and back stories. I hope you can make sense of--and enjoy--the somewhat condensed version of Clint's journey you find here.
> 
> Now for some warnings... This story contains graphic depictions of violence, thoughts/discussion of suicide & self-harm, complex emotional and physical relationships among consenting adults, presumed and temporary character death (happens in the past and off screen, but forms one of the central conflicts of the story), depictions of war, discussion of M/F and M/M sex with mentioned past M/M/F sex, and a fair amount of general unpleasantness. If you have questions, please PM me on LiveJournal or comment here.
> 
> Languages: Several non-English languages (including ASL and Russian, among others) are depicted in this story at various times. Because the characters communicating in those languages are fluent (or semi-fluent) and understand the content of the communications rather than using "foreign" phrases, descriptions of ASL signs, etc., I have translated into idiomatic English. The one occasion where it is important that one character is speaking in a language the other does not understand, I have left the phrase untranslated.
> 
> Also, this is semi-compliant with Season 2 of Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D, but I've selected an alternative location for the Playground...

****

Charybdis and Other Monsters

Clint Barton was in Afghanistan when everything went to hell. Looking back, sometimes he thought it would have been easier to let the country take him. Graveyard for countless wars with its harsh mountainous terrain. It claimed plenty of people far, far better than him.

After all, he’d already lost everything. He’d been taken over, touched and used up, perverted into a monster. He’d killed people who trusted him, looked up to him, served alongside him for years. He’d helped Loki’s minions—his other minions, Clint was one too—infiltrate the Helicarier. And in doing so, he’d been complicit in killing the best thing in his life. Phil had died, and it had been his fault. And no amount of “cognitive recalibration” could make up for that or the devastation that followed. Not even his actions in the battle of New York. 

He couldn’t trust himself. He couldn’t forgive himself. And neither could S.H.I.E.L.D.

Which was why he was on the other side of the world in the ass end of nowhere on a solo mission with no extraction plan when the world ended. It was also the reason he’d been there for six months and the reason he didn’t find the com silence sudden or out of the ordinary. In fact, when Steve Rogers became the most wanted fugitive on the planet, Clint was holed up in a mountainside crevice evading the “insurgents” he’d been tracking and trying to avoid succumbing to exposure in the cold, spring snow. 

When Alexander Pierce had been killed and the helicariers had gone crashing into each other, obliterating the Triskelion, Clint had been hunkered down, wrapped in a S.H.I.E.L.D. issue thermal blanket trying to make it through another night of bitter, biting cold. When Bucky Barnes (no longer quite the Winter Soldier) had pulled Steve Rogers from the Potomac, Clint had been fending off hypothermia for hours and was desperately trying to hold onto consciousness at least until the break of dawn. 

When a new dawn broke, for Clint’s friends and (former) colleagues a half a world away, the world had ended, but for Clint it was just another day. One more day watching Turkish ex-pat Tahir Fahri and his cohorts through the scope of a rifle, one more day of putting one foot in front of the other, hoping his marksmanship skills didn’t get too rusty with the constant hurry-up-and-wait (to be useful) when the moment came. Of course, if he failed, no one would miss him—well no one would miss him but _Nat_ , but even she had another life, another partner these days. This was just one more low-priority surveillance op. That’s why they gave it to him. In the eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D’s top brass, Hawkeye was unreliable and ultimately, expendable. The mission’s failure wouldn’t spell doom for S.H.I.E.L.D. 

_Or so he thought._

When the notorious Black Widow testified before Congress, Clint Barton discovered Hydra was alive and well in the world…

~~~

_You have got to be kidding me!_ Clint thought to himself shifting his weight to ease himself into a better position without giving away his hiding spot or falling off the rough, windswept rock ledge where he’d crammed himself. Once upon a time, Clint would have taken care to anchor himself to the rock face so he didn’t fall or slide off the cliff. These days, Clint didn’t much care.

Although he was starting to think maybe he _should_ have. For the first time in a month, Tahir Fahri had a visitor. And unlike last month and the month before and the month before that… this visitor didn’t look like the guy’s shady-but-not-particularly interesting accountant. 

No this was someone different. The visitor arrived in a black Lincoln that _screamed_ diplomatic transport so loud he was shocked there weren’t flags flying from the bumpers. He turned the scope on the car, checked for plates, checked again, set down his sniper rifle and traded that scope for the high-powered StarkTech binoculars he hadn’t had prior occasion to use. _Damn_ No plates at all. No identifying marks on the vehicle whatsoever, other than, well, it seemed entirely out of place on a desolate unpaved road deep in the mountains Northwest of Charikar. 

Something struck Clint as _wrong_ about the situation. Years of experience honing his senses, first as a circus performer, briefly in the Army, and two decades in S.H.I.E.L.D., had taught him to trust that feeling even when he couldn’t put a finger on what it was that was wrong. Clint’s hands fumbled for his long-ignored comm control without conscious thought. 

“Hawkeye to Control, over.” He waited, his ears greeted only by the faint static hiss of dead air. “Hawkeye to S.H.I.E.L.D. Control, over,” he repeated.

Nothing. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t exactly been _chatty_ to Clint as of late, but his nominal handler, some fucking level _6_ agent Sitwell had appointed in an apparent attempt to distance Clint more from the rest of STRIKE and the former Avengers, wasn’t usually one to _ignore_ Clint during direct contact.

Someone was getting out of the vehicle. Not the driver. A back door opened and Fahri approached, hand extended and a wide grin upon his face. _Fuck._ Fahri was a fairly emotionless bastard from what Clint had seen. The idea of someone who would make him smile didn’t bode well. 

A slender, but sturdy man with short-cropped brown hair, greying at the temples, emerged from the vehicle. He was wearing plain military-inspired clothes and held himself like he’d just stepped off a Nazi recruiting poster. 

Clint shuddered. Between the Circus and S.H.I.E.L.D., he’d worked with an awful lot of people who themselves or their families had had been directly affected by the holocaust. As a man whose sexuality and identity fell pretty far over on the gay end of the spectrum, and who had recently been the unwilling pawn of a madman hell-bent on bending the world to his will, Clint’s stomach turned at the association. But he couldn’t shake it. There was something about the guy that brought to mind images from the SSR Archives of jack boots and Red Skull and the hungry maw of Hydra.

“Hawkeye to S.H.I.E.L.D. Control, over. Hawkeye to Helicarier Actual, Over. Does anyone read?”

The man turned towards Clint’s hiding place and the sun glinted off the round lens in front of his eye. Just _one_ lens, not glasses. _A monocle?_ Clint’s stomach flipped again as an image forced its way to the front of his mind. It was an old SSR file, one he’d studied at length when he’d been stuck in recovery and Phil— _don’t think of Phil_ —his handler had suggested studying history and tactics to keep Clint from climbing the walls until he was allowed out of bed and down to the range. _Wolfgang von Struker, Baron, Hydra Agent and leader during World War II_.

It _couldn’t_ be. 

Struker was dead. Had been for 70 years.

But then again, Nat’s partner these days was one Stephen Grant Rogers, born 1918, presumed dead in 1945, but oh so very much alive, so… Who was to say it couldn’t really _be_ Baron von Struker meeting with their suspected Ten Rings operative? Even if it wasn’t, someone who _imitated_ or emulated von Struker definitely threw up a red flag or two as far as Clint was concerned.

“Hawkeye to S.H.I.E.L.D., over. Need update on mission objective. Any new intel on target subject. Repeat requesting any available updates on mission parameters for Operation Bird Watch.”

_More static._

Frustrated, heart hammering in his chest as he watched the von Struker look-alike shake hands with and then embrace Fahri, Clint checked his hearing aids, first the left, then the right, winced when the squeal of unwanted feedback slammed like an icepick into his brain. Nope. The settings were definitely correct. He _would_ be able to hear if S.H.I.E.L.D. answered. _Must be the damn rocks_ , he thought. It was a problem they’d had off and on with just about every mission in Afghanistan. The mountains were great with their rabbit-warren-like complex of cliffs and caves and crevasses, providing an excellent array of places for agents to hide, take cover, and set up shop for long-term surveillance. But the same features that made the terrain so versatile and enhanced agents’ concealment, wreaked holy hell with satellites and satellite-based com systems. 

Overhanging rock and solid rock caves interfered with the signal, while the mountains themselves were rich with veins of magnetite and a variety of other dense minerals that tended to scatter or block signals or send the signals bouncing around around like balls in a pinball machine. Sometimes communications came through just fine, sometimes you got bupkis. It looked like today was bupkis. Which sucked, because Clint most certainly had something to report. 

Frustrated, he shimmied as close to the edge of the cliff as he dared, hooking the toes of his boots into a crack in the rock behind him, trying to brace himself and provide leverage as he zoomed the binoculars in to their maximum magnification and leaned out as far as he dared. 

Baron-look-alike was patting a silver briefcase that was tightly clutched in one hand. Fahri was still smiling (Clint shuddered), and looked positively elated when Baron-look-alike held out the briefcase for a hand-off. 

Clint squinted, focusing on the two men’s lips and body language. He wasn’t entirely confident in his ability to speechread Dari, but he was pretty sure he caught the rough equivalents of “promised,” “tested,” and “expectations,” followed by something that could have been “Struker.” He flinched, shifted again, and refocused, binoculars landing on the briefcase again. As it changed hands, it was turned directly towards Clint for a split-second, and he saw it. 

Red, tentacled. _Hydra._

It was only years of training that kept Clint from falling or dropping the binoculars.

Okay, he hated the idea of braking camp, stopping surveillance, and heading back into town (especially since it was a very, very long hike—40 km, give or take), but if _this?_ was something S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to hear. And see. He flicked the control on the side of the binoculars with his thumb and began snapping photos of everything he could see.

If he couldn’t raise S.H.I.E.L.D. on the sat phone, he was going to have to go into town. _Real_ town, where he could get a reliable landline to make a call to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s emergency number, if he had to. But he wasn’t going to go without gathering all the intel he could, so he kept on snapping photos.

He noticed when von Struker looked in his direction, but the man couldn’t possibly have seen him just over a klick away, could he?

~~~

Clint walked back into town and found the café. He’d been there once a month or so for the last six months. There was a secure landline in back. It was a good opportunity to get a decent bite to eat and he could usually get a shower out of the owner if he tipped well.

Something seemed _off_ though compared to the last time he’d been in. It was starting to bother him that his comms still weren’t working. He wasn’t getting static, just dead air… It was probably a faulty comm, but that was disconcerting because his comms were his hearing aids, and if they weren’t working… he pushed the thought out of his mind and sidled up to the counter to order.

There was a TV behind the cash register set to Al Jazeera. A reporter was droning on about something, the sound was either off or turned too low for him to hear, and he was preoccupied, so he wasn’t really trying to hear what she was saying. 

The scene cut to a shot of the Senate Chamber a familiar redhead sitting before a microphone. The headline scrolling across the screen in Arabic testified loosely as “Hydra threat… S.H.I.E.L.D. agents still at large.”

Clint blinked. Blinked again. No, that was _still_ Nat. The photo changed to pictures of the Triskelion, smoking and melted, a crashing Helicarier. Tony Stark shoving his hand at a camera. Director Fury— _dead_? The lump of anxiety that had been growing in Clint’s gut since he’d seen an impossible Nazi shake hands with at Ten Rings operative turned to ice, freezing him head to toe. 

The story was showing pictures of Steve Rogers—Captain America still at large—and he knew what was coming before it even happened. His heart still stutter-stepped as he saw his own photo—his _S.H.I.E.L.D._ ID photo no less, filling up the screen. _Well shit._

He was spitting distance from a US Air Force base. At least five of the people in the café were servicemen. Two more were contractors. He was standing there, undisguised, staring at the TV, and he still had his standard-issue tracker imbedded in his hip… it would be seconds before anyone, someone came to arrest him (or kill him). Clint thought about giving up, giving in, just letting go, but he couldn’t do that to Phil’s memory, and he _had_ to tell someone about Strucker, and if not S.H.I.E.L.D., then someone. Natasha. Natasha was still alive, still out there, apparently still free, still believed him.

He saw a glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. “Agent Barton.”

Now or never. Die or fight. No way he would let them take him alive. Not after Loki. He’d never be used again. 

He decided to fight.

Clint fought his way out, pursued by dozens across rooftops and through back alleys. He soon realized they were tracking him, so stealing some medical supplies from a small pharmacy, he ducked into a basement utility room and cut the tracker out of his hip, and out of his bow. He realized he had to leave certain arrows and the rifle as he couldn’t remove the trackers from them. Just as he was about to leave, more turned up, and Clint realized they were tracking him through his hearing aids. He had to resort to smashing them, but then was able to get away.

He headed back to the mountains where he’d come from. He knew the terrain. The rocks would play havoc with any trackers they managed to point his way.

~~~

He dreamt of Phil.

He hadn’t dreamed about Phil in almost a year. At the time, he’d wondered if it had been more curse than blessing. Or worse, a revelation of who he really was deep down inside. _Unworthy._ Sometimes he dreamed about Phil alive and warm and there beside him. He dreamed of Phil telling him how much he loved him. He dreamed of the past. Of the future they never got to have. He dreamed about happy times and every time he woke up the grief and loss and regret surged through him anew. Rushing in like the tide and threatening to drown him in the undertow. 

Sometimes he thought he deserved it.

Other dreams had been torture. Phil asking him “why” over and over again. Phil telling him he was ashamed of Clint. How come Clint couldn’t stand up to the thrall of Loki’s staff? How come he couldn’t resist? How come Clint couldn’t see through the haze of that control to the wrongness of what he was doing when he flew onto the Helicarier and started killing his own men? The people who trusted him? When he set in motion the chain of events that led to Phil’s death? _Why did you kill me?_

In those dreams, Phil blamed Clint, and Clint agreed. After all, no one else trusted him anymore. 

_Except maybe Natasha._

Every time he had one of those dreams Clint wished he’d died in Phil’s place. He tried not to think about how Phil would have handled his death—Phil could be _damned_ —sentimental at times. Of course the more he’d tried not to think about it, the more he had, and eventually he reached the conclusion that as long as Phil hadn’t had to pull the trigger himself, he would have been okay. He would have been pissed off and angry: betrayed by Clint and mad that events had transpired so he never got the chance to try and save Clint. Someone, probably Fury, possibly backed up by Hill, would have pointed out that Clint had already been lost. That if they’d managed to get him back _somehow_ , S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t have been able to trust him again. Even if he’d held his rank and level in name, he would have been a liability, essentially frozen out. And that would have eaten at Phil and eaten at Clint, twisted their relationship until there was nothing left. Every single thread of their lives, of their life together, would have been perverted and destroyed. Eventually Phil would have recognized that he’d already lost Clint when Loki’s staff first touched him. Nat would have backed this up, even if some part of her didn’t believe it, she would have sold Phil on it, because it was what he needed to hear. Then Phil would have gotten all righteously indignant and gone on a roaring rampage of revenge. He would have descended on Loki like the army of God and he would have been all proper and professional and courteous while doing it too… perfectly Phil.

When the little voice in the back of Clint’s mind had wondered if maybe Phil would have still wished Clint was alive, even if their relationship was destroyed and S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t trust him, because at least then he’d be _alive_ , Clint shut it down and ignored it feigning deafness to his own thoughts. 

So when Clint awoke, cold and in pain, in a particularly hard and unyielding cave the morning after he learned about the end of the world and realized he’d been dreaming about Phil—for the first time, he was _glad_ Phil was dead. So, so glad that Phil hadn’t lived to see his beloved agency destroyed. Hadn’t learned his S.H.I.E.L.D. had been corrupt from the beginning, evil and rotten to its core. It would have torn Phil apart. Clint was filled with such—relief—that Phil’s dream had been untarnished that Phil had never had that burden on his conscience, the giddiness that followed left him light headed.

His hip stung like a sonofabitch where he’d removed the tracker, his back and every bone and joint in his body ached with the strain of sleeping on wholly unyielding rock, and the—loss—of his hearing aids had him jumping at every shadow, every vibration, but hey, at least it was _him_ here to deal with the aftermath and not Phil. 

Of course it didn’t take long for Clint’s thoughts to turn maudlin, to jump to the “what ifs.” Because, he couldn’t help wondering, if Phil were alive, would Hydra have succeeded? If Alexander Pierce had declared Steve Rogers enemy no. 1 and asked Phil _Coulson_ to hunt him down, would Coulson—Captain America fanboy extraordinaire, have complied? 

No. No fucking way.

And Clint didn’t have to wonder for a second if maybe Coulson was really Hydra, as apparently so many other people Clint had trusted were, because this was _Phil_. Phil was— _had been_ —strong and earnest and steadfast and true. For all the darkness and despair he’d seen. For all the _dirty_ work of war and espionage he’d _done_ , Phil Coulson had been an idealist at heart. He believed in doing what was right. In saving people. In making the world a little safer… but in a way that believed in _people_ and made them _need_ to be better versions of themselves. No way in hell, not in a million years, would Phil have ever had anything to do with Hydra.

So what would have happened if he’d been around? If Jasper Sitwell had been somewhere else, not the guy on the ground calling the shots? Would Hydra have succeeded? Would it have revealed itself? Would S.H.I.E.L.D. have fallen? Or would Phil have been just one more casualty… someone to get out of the way, check off the list, like Director Fury? Would they have blamed Phil’s death on a secret Steve was keeping? Or would Phil have stood his ground, begged and borrowed and stole and pleaded until he scraped together enough of a defense to stop Hydra in its tracks?

Was the corruption so complete and so extensive S.H.I.E.L.D would have been doomed no matter what?

If Phil had been there…

Of course, Phil _wasn’t_ there, and that was Clint’s fault. Had he unknowingly doomed them all when he’d succumbed to the pull of Loki’s staff? Had Phil’s death been the key piece of the puzzle that paved the way for Hydra’s reemergence, their decision to throw off the mask and step out of the shadows?

Nat would tell him he was borrowing trouble. Nat would tell him to pull it together, to make the others take responsibility for what they had done. After all, Hydra was willing to (and had succeeded) take out Nick motherfucking Fury, the most paranoid, over-prepared person Clint had ever known. Chances were, Phil’s continued life would have just meant Clint would have come out of a cave to watch an international news broadcast talking about how the love of his life had been executed.

Still, he was glad Phil hadn’t lived to see it. And in this brave new world, he took solace in that realization. He couldn’t forgive himself. Wouldn’t forget. But now he could see the silver lining.

Which took him back to the crux of the matter. Now what? With the U.S. Military, all its allies, Hydra, and probably every three-letter agency in the world (but especially the American ones) out to get him, what _now_?

He needed resources. Right now he had his sidearm, the backup stashed in his boot. Three full magazines—two for the M&P and the mag currently in the Beretta Nano in his boot—a box of 9 mm, a bow with a chunk carved out of it. A selection of arrows crammed in a makeshift quiver he’d created from his spare daypack. A dozen MREs, a half-empty med kit and the clothes on his back. He’d left most of his gear at his last campsite, and he couldn’t chance going back to any of his stashes. The entire area would be under surveillance. His best chance would be to slip out at night. 

He needed supplies. 

Did he head west? North? There were places in Russia he would be able to contact Natasha, get word about von Strucker… 

But he’d never make it, not without _some_ resources.

He could head East, through the pass to Pakistan. It was risky and would take him out of the way, but he had contacts—well one contact that would probably still talk to him, S.H.I.E.L.D. or no. It was a risk, but it was better than sitting on his ass waiting to be discovered.

~~~

Peshawar had changed since Clint was last there. Maybe it was because he was seeing it from street-level in the inky-blue, oversaturated light of 0330 rather than his typical bird’s-eye view. Maybe it was the seven years that had passed since he’d last been there, his recollection foggy with the passage of time. Maybe it really had changed.

_Maybe it was the universe lurching under his feet and spinning 180 on an axis he hadn’t known existed._

Clint had lost his world when Phil died. He’d thought that was as dramatic a change of life as he could hope—hah!—to experience in his lifetime.

_Should have known better._

After all he’d known the Universe was bigger than the world for quite some time. He’d experienced it first hand at the end of Loki’s staff... Clint just never imagined he could lose every compass point, every grid line, hell the entire map of his life with a few clicks of a mouse. Black was white. Up was down. Good was evil. S.H.I.E.L.D. was Hydra. And Clint was an enemy of the state.

Every state.

Shaking himself, he cleared the self-pity from his mind and crept out of the shadows. The market was deserted this time of morning, as were most of the streets, but Clint wasn’t willing to risk being out in the open any more than strictly necessary. For all he knew there was an NSA or CIA (or MI6, Mossad, FSB... pick your poison alphabet soup!) satellite tasked to this area tracking his every move, or looking for any sign of him on likely escape vectors. 

So he darted from shadow to shadow, pausing behind vendor carts, and carefully draped tables, dicked into doorways, and sprinted his way across larger streets, and pressed himself against walls, holding his breath, heart beating fast enough to burst— _to break_ —in an effort to stay out of sight.

He tried not to think about how he was on his own. He’d had two years to get used to the idea that Phil wasn’t on the other end of his comms waiting to read his mind or relay vital information at precisely the right time. _Phil wasn’t there to hold his metaphorical hand, the voice in his ear, keeping him sane as he bled out on a cracked and forgotten rooftop at the ass end of nowhere, with no extraction plan._

He’d worked for years without extraction plans, it was true. But he’d always had Nat. _Always had Phil._ Most importantly, there had always been a home, a place, a headquarters to extract his own ass _to_. Now there was just a planet full of people who knew his name and face and were convinced he was trying to destroy the world. A planet full of people looking for him, who didn’t need an excuse to pull the trigger.

He stopped again and took in his surroundings hiding beside the unsettling bulk of a mango vendor’s cart. Everything around him had an ominous cast to it. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the early morning light or an indication of his mental state. If he was right—and he wasn’t all that confident that he was, his ground-based orienteering was for shit—Izzie’s place was one block north, on the other side of the street.

That was assuming Izzie hadn’t moved. 

He brushed the thought aside. Izzie was a creature of habit with a certain degree of laziness who loathed and despised everyone in equal measure, hut was happy to dispense favors, back-scratching, and brow-nosing to all the right people at all the right times (and often for the right price) to stay in business and out of everyone’s crosshairs. He was always willing to look the other way (for a price), was a skilled artist (forger), and had access to all the specialists whose crafts were different or better than his. In short, Izzie was lazy. He did what he wanted and he worked the balance of favors in his direction so he wouldn’t have to move. 

He’d helped Clint and S.H.I.E.L.D. a few times despite his professed disgust at the latter’s purpose. He’d also helped a shit-ton of the terrorists S.H.I.E.L.D. had been tasked to take down. He had no love for AIM or the Ten Rings or Hammer or any other flavor of warlord-of-the-week, so chances were he’d have no love for Hydra, either, especially after their latest stunt had likely wreaked havoc with Izzie’s balance of favors. That’s why Clint was willing to take the chance and go to him.

Of course there was always the possibility S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implosion had so fucked with Izzie’s contacts that Izzie wouldn’t be able to help. Or that he wouldn’t want to help. He owed Clint favors, sure, but what were the odds he’d honor them knowing that Clint was in no position to _do_ anything to collect... no position to pay him back should the favors tip in his direction?

But Clint was here... He’d already traveled away from Natasha’s last known position, away from the handful of reference points and dead drops they had that might still be secure, away from people who might be more interested in intel about a supposedly long-dead Nazi scientist meeting with known terrorists than capturing or killing Clint, and into a hot zone because it represented the best chance he had of getting passable papers and supplies. 

So Clint sucked it up and darted across the street, crept up the block, until he was crouched outside Izzie’s building ensconced in the shadows around the dumpsters.

~~~

The tiny flaw in Clint’s plan was that it even in early May, sunrise in Peshawar wasn’t until 0630 give or take and staying still even with the adrenaline crash, Clint was getting warm. It would be even warmer once the sun rose. He was dressed for altitude—there had been patchy snow on the ground when this whole… ordeal had started. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he’d spotted Barron von Strucker. May in Peshawar was the start of summer. And in the semi-arid climate summer was _hot_ , and it didn’t get actually cold at night. If he had to guess he figured it was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit—which corresponded with the LED temperature sign he’d seen earlier when he’d jumped off the truck he’d used to secretly hitch a ride. Here in the Old City the press of the city’s 3.5 million or so people wasn’t quite so frantic, cloying, but the temperature was only going to rise, and he was already starting to sweat.

After the first hour of starting and jumping at every vibration (Clint couldn’t hear well enough to tell if someone was coming up behind him), he moved away from the dumpster and along the until he settled into a corner that had a good view of the door and the street, but ensured no one could sneak up behind him. He could have just scaled the building—there was a conveniently positioned drainpipe and series of old balconies festooned with draperies, drying laundry, and signs of life. The building was old, but the balconies were well-used and probably wouldn’t tear out of the wall and send him plummeting to his death if he climbed them. But… but he didn’t want to risk surprising Izzie or any of the other residents. That could only attract the wrong sort of attention. (And knowing Izzie, he’d windup taking several rounds from an AK before he had the chance to open his mouth.)

So he crouched, hands in their fingerless shooting gloves starting to sweat, sweat pooling at the back of his neck under his too-long hair, dripping drop after drop turning into rivulets, down the center of his back and pooling underneath his holster. The molded cowhide was wet, starting to stick to his skin. He could strip, take off a few layers, he’d certainly wasn’t attired correctly for the environment, but he knew from experience that wasn’t a good idea. His clothes—well past the point of acceptable cleanliness and passed into downright wretchedly uncomfortable—were dark, designed to blend in with the shadows. They were also covered in blood, sweat, and tons of DNA evidence that would be quickly linked to him. Not to mention his undershirt was currently a bloodstained, torn mess and his spare had been used for bandages. Most importantly, anything he took off he’d lose. If he had to move quickly, he would probably have to leave it behind. Until he had more of a plan and a little more certainty, the more he kept on his person the better prepared he’d be the next time the shit hit the fan.

So he leaned against the wall, and waited, focusing on the distant thrum that was probably the city’s traffic, doing everything to annoy the sticky, sweaty itch that seemed to accompany the rising mergury.

A few cars passed on the street outside, their headlights not quite penetrating the depths of his corner. But still, no one in the building stirred. Finally about 0600, the sky rapidly pinking with the coming dawn, the building’s back door opened, the sudden movement jerking him from a meditative near doze.

A man in western clothes emerged, pausing to look around before setting off toward the street. It took Clint a split second to confirm the man was not Izzie (too tall and broad) and few heartbeats more to be sure he hadn’t been spotted. 

He wasn’t certain he would be immediately recognized by sight, but skulking in the shadows tended to arouse suspicions and that plus his bloody, torn clothes and completely disheveled appearance would make anyone take a second look. When he was sure the man had not seen him and was not likely to turn back, he sprinted from his corner on cat’s feet, making it to the door to catch it with his fingertips just before it closed. 

Biting his tongue to suppress a gasp as the stitches in his thigh pulled and his right index finger got pinched in the door, he took another quick glance around and slipped inside. His heart was pounding with anxiety and the frantic thumpa thump filled what little he could hear. Clint took 30 seconds to compose himself, breathing exercises steadying him and pushing aside the adrenaline spike jitters. In that time his eyes adjusted and he could make out the door, the stairs, another door—locked—that probably led to a utility closet, a tiny window at the far end of a narrow hall, and the flickering yellow light of an incandescent bulb coming from the hall on the floor above.

Izzie lived on the third floor—high enough to be protected from most ground-based interlopers, close enough to the roof of the five-story building to make his escape that way if needed, and not so high up that a fall would kill. Izzie had been an escape artist when he’d been in the circus—when he wasn’t painting backdrops or scamming customers out of everything they owned—and it showed in his accommodations. 

So Clint started up the stairs, keeping his movements methodical, relaxed, purposeful, while still doing his best to be silent sticking close to the wall to minimize the chance of potential squeaks.

~~~

Knock. Pause. Knock, knock knock. Pause. Knock.

Clint waited in front of the old door with its peeling blue paint back itching wich the constant feeling he was being watched. He gave in to the paranoia and glanced left, right, attempting to keep up the casual demeanor. 

_It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you._

No one else was out and about. It was still before sunrise, still too early for morning prayers. He raised his left hand to knock again when the door opened abruptly revealing the scowling redheaded form of Izzie Shea. “Barton?” he asked skeptically in his London accent. “Boy have you stepped in it, mate.”

Izzie grabbed Clint by his bloody—literally—collar and yanked him inside closing the door behind him.

“Why the fuck would you come here?”

“You’re not on anybody’s side but your own,” Clint responded.

“Never did think much of those fuckin’ S.H.I.E.L.D. wankers,” Izzy muttered. “Whatta ya need?”

“Clothes, food, shower, some med supplies... papers,” he hedged. 

“You want the moon, don’t ya? Oh god you reek. Shower first, mate. I’ve got clothes that should fit you.” And Izzie was off, dissappearing around the corner into one of the apartment’s warren of cubbies and boltholes leaving Clint with no way to track what he said. He thought about calling after Izzie, letting him know he couldn’t hear, but quickly changed his mind. No need to share weakness or borrow trouble. So he waved his hand in dismissal and headed towards the bathroom. 

He stripped as quickly as his abused muscles would allow and chucked his disgusting, blood-and-sweat-crusted clothes on the floor, taking his boots into the bathroom with him and tucking them behind the door. They’d probably get wet—the shower wasn’t much more than a drain in the floor—but hard-earned experience had taught him protected feet and a reliable weapon were indispensable, and his boots provided both. He turned on the water—surprisingly warm—and focused on getting clean as efficiently as possible.

It didn’t occur to him until he was drying off and applying clean bandages to wonder why Izzie was being so agreeable. 

He was exhausted, in pain, malnourished, and dehydrated. So he pushed it aside and focused on business. 

Izzie was helpful in pulling together clothes, MREs, weapons (including basic arrows), and other supplies. Clint prodded him on the issue of papers again. “They don’t have to be perfect. A rush job is fine. If it gets to the point where someone is closely scrutinizing my papers, I’m up shit creek anyway. From what I understand they’ve been plastering my dossier photo over every news network 24/7 for the last three weeks.” 

“I know, mate. It was kind of hard to miss,” Izzie said defensively. 

“Look, I was on surveillance in the ass-end of nowhere freezing my balls off while my life history was being plastered over the airwaves. I come into civilization to make a call and find myself at the center of a Mexican standoff with Hydra, a team of Navy Seals, and the FSB. I’ve been shot at, slashed, beat up, and I had to ditch my best arrows and half my gear because it was infested with trackers. All I want is something to waive at border crossings so I’ve got half a chance of making it through without a shootout. I know I’m landing shit in your lap, but if you don’t want to help, just let me know, I’ll get lost…” he nodded at the bright morning sun. “Might ask to wait until nightfall, but that’s about it.”

“Nah, I’ll help you,” he waved his smart phone around. “Just waiting to hear back from my fastest papers bloke. What passport you wantin’?”

“Something without an extradition treaty with the U.S. Something where I have a better chance of blending in… Brazil, maybe Russia.”

“Would you actually go to Brazil? Sip piña coladas and shit—”

“Caipirhinas,” Clint corrected.

“Eh, whatever. You on a beach in Rio, in the rainforest? I’m just not seeing it.”

 _Worked pretty well for Dr. Banner_ , Clint thought. Aloud he said, “É, não é o lugar pior que já estive,” with a shrug.

“You know I don’t speak Portuguese,” Izzie shot back.

“Well, I’m not suggesting you go hide out in Brazil.” _Didn’t say I was going there either._ Clint glanced at the sun, then his new basic Timex, and back at Izzie. “How long ‘til your guy gets here? Or are we meeting him? You need a pic, what?”

“Just a little longer,” Izzie said, his voice trailing off as he checked his phone. He kept talking, but he turned away from Clint and he couldn’t make out the words. Instead, he sat back on Izzie’s shabby couch and worked on repacking his pack, checking and double checking each supply, making sure he hadn’t missed a tracker. Izzie wasn’t the type to pass off tainted goods, but then again, he wasn’t usually so generous…

The same doubt that had started itching at the back of Clint’s mind while he was in the shower returned. Izzie was making him at ease, giving him lots of _good_ merchandise—a variety of clothes that would make it easier for him to blend in anywhere in the region, ammo, arrows, a new watch, flashlight, and a top-end field medic’s kit—but he was holding out, stalling, on one issue, _papers _. And Clint was falling for it. He knew Izzie and he’d bet his ass Izzie had at least a dozen blank passports stashed in his apartment.__

___If Izzie was being really generous, he’d slap something together for Clint himself._ _ _

__Across the room, Izzie glanced at his phone again._ _

__Swift and sure, Clint drew the Beretta Nano from his boot, and was on his feet with the sights lined up by the time Izzie turned around._ _

__Izzie didn’t hold up his hands or look surprised. Instead a flash of _resignation_ flew across his face. “Why couldn’t you just come quietly?” he asked._ _

__“No, you don’t get to ask questions,” Clint countered. “Why’d you do it?”_ _

__“Why’d I do it? Why’d _I_ do what? You’re the imbecile who showed up on my doorstep.”_ _

__“You owed me,” Clint said. “I never did anything—”_ _

__“Bullshite! You brought this down on your head. I told you your government jobs, your S.H.I.E.L.D., was gonna stab you in the back sooner or later. As you so kindly pointed out, your picture has been plastered across every news wire, website, paper, and television from here to hell for the better part of a month. They checked your known associates,” he shrugged. “Guess someone slipped up and mentioned me.”_ _

__“ _Who_?” Clint demanded, twitching the gun when Izzie started to move. _ _

__“You don’t want to do that, mate. This time of day, there’s still people in the building. You shoot me, police will be crawling all over the place before you can get out.”_ _

__“Who did you sell me out to?” Clint asked again._ _

__“Not entirely sure. Said they were military. Didn’t ask whose. Don’t really care. Wouldn’t be too surprised if your mythical serpent pals showed up either.”_ _

__“How long do I have?” Clint demanded, keeping the gun on Izzie but checking the exits. Four meters to the nearest window. Balcony to balcony up to the rooftop, rooftop-to-rooftop escape on foot… it was the best option for him especially in daylight. He could get out of the old city, maybe blend into the crowd in one of the bazaars or get lost in rush hour downtown… He turned his full attention back to Izzie and immediately regretted the momentary distraction._ _

__Izzie was moving his hand from his ears. Something blue like an earplug on steroids protruded from each ear._ _

__The image tugged at Clint’s memory. Something from one of the briefing files on Stark… it had been more Nat’s territory than his but he’d seen it. What was the deal?_ _

__“I’m sorry to have to do this, but they’re going to be a few more minutes, and I need to make sure you’re here to be collected.” He looked Clint in the eye. “I deliver you or they kill me. They’ve had me under surveillance since before Romanov testified at your Congress.”_ _

__Clint hesitated. _Stupid.__ _

__He didn’t see where the threat was coming from. Didn’t notice until too late, that Izzie’s hand was in his pocket. Was still worried about the gunshot attracting attention._ _

__It felt like his head exploded, both ears throbbing, his temples twitching. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He staggered back and collapsed on the couch arm dropping, sight lines lost._ _

__He saw the device in Izzie’s hand. Saw the file in his head. Tony Stark. Ten Rings. The Ironmonger incident… some sort of sonic emitter that used intense, ultra-high-frequency sound to paralyze and immobilize its target. Tony Stark had the arc reactor stolen right out of his chest under the influence of these things._ _

__Izzie was talking again, pacing. Clint couldn’t track the conversation, but he didn’t care. He didn’t _feel_ paralyzed, just… stunned? In pain for sure. Maybe a little weakened. He’d never been happier to be hard of hearing in his life. He clearly wasn’t _immune_ to the device, but it must rely on frequencies he couldn’t process. He could move his hand. His toes. Breathing through the pain, he counted to 3 and jumped up, raising the Beretta again as he grabbed his pack with his right hand. “I’m sorry Izzie, but they’re gonna kill you anyway. I can’t let them take me alive.”_ _

__Clint never got to follow up that thought, because the door burst inwards, and all hell broke loose. He reacted on training and instinct, fired three shots, hitting two people and winging a third. It was 9mm though, so he wasn’t very confident anyone he’d hit would stay down or even be slowed down, but it was all he could do, only 4 shots left, before he had to reload, and he was already diving towards the open window anyway._ _

__He emerged on the balcony rolling to a crouch. A bullet ricocheted off the stucco near his hand and he dove again, grabbing the low wall that surrounded the balcony and swinging over the side as he swung his pack onto his back. He hopped around the outside of the balcony over to the corner where it joined the building, springing from there to the drainpipe he’d spotted earlier in the morning—it the metal vibrated ominously with the impact, but Clint didn’t have time to worry, he was already scrambling up, past the fourth floor to the fifth, and up to the roof._ _

__More bullets._ _

__He glanced down, saw two Army Rangers leaning over the balcony staring up at him._ _

___Great. The Bastards using terrorist tech weren’t even the actual terrorist organization._ _ _

__One of them was raising his weapon, so Clint swung to the other side of the pipe and pushed off, grabbing the edge of the roof with his fingertips._ _

__For a moment he didn’t think he’d make it, sweaty hands losing traction, but he managed to brace his foot against the drainpipe and get a better grip. Hauled himself up… only to realize his mistake._ _

__Izzie had _said_ they’d had him under surveillance. Clint should have realized it was satellite surveillance. Approaching from the far side of the roof about a half-click out, was a black helicopter, no logo, no markings, but dollars to donuts the black-clad commandos spilling from within were Hydra. _ _

__“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, feet already moving. That wasn’t just a strike team. It was a gunship. One hit from that gun and he’d explode like a ripe melon. He couldn’t exactly sprint away, since that would mean setting out over open space and falling to his death below, but he _could_ run sideways, North towards the next building, so that was what he did._ _

__He’d made the leap, duck, and roll onto the neighboring rooftop before he heard the muted thump and ping of large-caliber automatic weapons fire. Ducked around an air conditioner compressor and used it for cover while he planned his next move. Ran to the edge of the roof. _Shit_. More Army Rangers were coming up the fire-escape. He ran to the far corner. It was a farther jump, but he could make it. Run. Run. Leap…_ _

__He slipped on impact, ankle twisting as he contorted into a sloppy roll. He was facing his pursuers now. Fired off the last four shots and stowed the now-empty Beretta. Grabbed for his bow and knocked an arrow._ _

__He’d hit two pursuers coming up the fire escape. They were down. He couldn’t tell if he’d actually hit anyone else or if the bullets had just caused them to duck and scatter. With the arrows, he targeted the Hydra agents pouring out of the helicopter and managed to take down three, but his arrows were limited, and if he stayed put any longer, he would be surrounded. He needed to lose them and fast._ _

__Clint continued to make his way from rooftop to rooftop ignoring the twinge in his ankle, dodging and weaving to make himself a more difficult target, pausing to fire off a two more arrows at strategic intervals. The evasion tactics were working well until he hit an intersection with a gap too wide to cross. Skidding to a halt at the edge, teetering before regaining his balance, he reached into his makeshift quiver and pulled out his one remaining grappler arrow. He didn’t want to sacrifice it, not yet, not when he couldn’t just reload another arrow with another grappling head, but he was running out of options, and what was the point of having it, if he wasn’t going to use it._ _

__He leaped, twisted, fired, watching with relief as the head latched onto the building’s rooftop securely. As he was falling, waiting for the fall to turn into a parabolic swing, that he felt a tearing sensation in his right side level with his floating ribs._ _

___He hadn’t even seen the shooter._ _ _

__Clint struck the building with a jolt that knocked the wind out of him. Dangled, fell the last 8 feet to the ground, landed awkwardly, fingers already pressing to his side, blood pooling at his fingertips. It was a through and through, and from the trajectory, he could tell it had missed major organs, but he was already losing a lot of blood, and judging by the way it _stabbed_ when he was able to breathe again, he had fractured a rib or two either from the shot or the uncontrolled impact with the wall. He looked regretfully up at his dangling grappling arrow, and set off on foot, holding his side._ _

__He’d landed smack dab in the middle of the bazaar, which was both a blessing and a curse. He could _see_ his pursuers through the distortion patterns they created in the crowd. Clusters there, people darting out of the way here, vendors shaking their fists in the air… he tried to stay ahead of the rush of people, grabbing a towel off the side of a melon cart, and pressing it against the wound, taking off his now-ruined outer-shirt and using it to create a makeshift bandage. He’d treat it properly when he got someplace safer. When he was out of immediate danger. But the pursuers didn’t stop._ _

__He rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a knife-wielding Hydra operative. Clint had his knife out of his belt and in his left hand before he processed what he was seeing. The operative charged—a amateurish move that shouldn’t have worked, except that it was aimed at Clint’s injured right side, and he wasn’t fast enough moving out of the way. The operative hit him full force, and knocked him to his back, sending them crashing through the flimsy back door of a street-level shop._ _

__Wincing at the impact, Clint used his right arm to brace against the attacker’s knife while trying to slash with his left hand. They rolled, slamming into the legs of a utility sink, and sending pain spiking through Clint’s side. The floor was filthy and smelled of something rancid. He gagged as the operative shifted his hand, to shove Clint’s head back, turning his neck so his nose was pointed directly at the mold-covered drain. Clint tried to kick, bucking, but couldn’t get leverage; the operative was sitting too high on his chest._ _

__Rising up with a head-butt that had him seeing double, Clint managed to free his left hand enough to strike, slipping the knife between the operative’s ribs, but as he did so he twisted, exposing more of his side to the Operative, who managed to rake his blade over Clint’s ribs, hitting the edge of the bullet wound._ _

__The attacking operative’s body went slack and Clint struggled to wiggle his way out from underneath. He turned to the door they’d crashed through, expecting to see a platoon of… something…waiting there, but there was no one. Perhaps their fight had been far enough away from the heart of the bazzar that no one had heard the commotion._ _

__He took a moment to pull himself together, trying to douse the wounds in antiseptic, grabbing two clean pressure bandages and a clean shirt out of his pack, before sneaking out the door, walking to the far end of the alley, and squeezing through a gate and out into the crush of people on street level._ _

__As he walked, pain shooting up his side with every step and every breath he took stock. His decision to go to Pakistan had been a gamble and a spectacular failure. Sure, he had some new gear, but he’d been shot and stabbed, twisted his ankle, used his last grappling arrow, and was now farther than ever from Natasha, and anyone who might believe his dire message about a very much alive Nazi scientist. He’d have to go back across the border, stow away in the back of a truck, make his way through the mountains into Tajikistan and then head north and west. All while evading Hydra and everyone else._ _

__And all assuming he didn’t die of infection first._ _

__Because while the field kit he’d gotten from Izzie was far better than what he’d had, he’d just rolled an open bullet wound in unidentified filth. If he didn’t die from sepsis within the week, he’d be damn lucky._ _

____

~~~

Clint made it back into Afghanistan and decided to head north into Tajikistan, hoping to slowly make his way across Asia to Volgograd, Natasha’s birthplace, where he knew he could leave a message for her. However, being in a Muslim country with alcohol not easily available and being far out in the boonies with no real access to medical care, Clint’s wounds soon became infected and he feared if he would make it that long.

Due to the destabilization after S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall, he found himself drifting into other people’s war zones. Fighting broke out around him and in his weakened state he couldn’t evade.

~~~

Clint woke to stillness and complete and utter silence. It was so much quieter than the constant faint muffled faintness he’d been enduring since ditching his aids in that bathroom in Charikar a month before, his chest flooded with momentary panic. He tried to move only to be hit with a wave of vertigo that had him flopping back into the relative security of the bed.

The bed?

_How did I get here? Where the hell am I?_

He breathed deeply to calm the rush of panic only for the pain to stop him cold. _Ok. Broken ribs._

Panting to get his breathing and pain under control, he tried again. This time he was careful to keep his head still and opened his eyes one millimeter at a time. The light felt too bright and too harsh, and his head began to throb with an urgency that suggested he had a concussion. Well _great_.

When he was confident he could move his eyes and focus without puking all over himself, he began a survey of his surroundings. He was in some sort of hospital or clinic. His brain wanted to say “S.H.I.E.L.D. medical,” only he knew that wasn’t right because the room was cramped and windowless, the ceiling tiles cracked and stained, the walls a sort of dingy off-yellow cinderblock, and the machinery was while not _ancient_ , definitely not up to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s (or Tony Stark’s) standards. Also, he hadn’t been to or near S.H.I.E.L.D. medical in what, nine months? Maybe more? For that matter...

_S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical didn’t exist anymore._

That recollection sent a spear of dread knifing through his gut. Okay, breathe. Not too deeply, ‘cause fuck _ow_ , but keep breathing and try to think. 

It came back to him in bits and pieces. Afghanistan. Von Struker. Hydra. S.H.I.E.L.D. Izzie’s betrayal. Getting shot. Getting stabbed. Sneaking back across two borders. The fever. The infection.

He had been headed north, north _west_ maybe? Was he in Tajikistan? Or had he crossed the Kazakh border? Or maybe the Uzbek border? He couldn’t remember. _Why couldn’t he remember?_

_Head injury, duh._

Okay, head injury. That would explain the concussion and light sensitivity. The nausea and memory gaps... maybe even the vertigo. But why was he _so_ deaf? Deafer than usual?

He paused and thought about it some more, closing his eyes against the agitating glare of flickering fluorescent light overhead. His ears felt... full, and painful. If he thought back... He tried to move his hands, found his left arm was strapped down—and _oh fuck_ he wasn’t doing that again—tried his right—and okay, that moved—and inched his hand up to his ear. Winced when the contact sent a spike of pain through his head.

Okay. So it felt like he had ruptured his eardrums... which would explain the extra deafness and the vertigo, and also suggested he had been in some kind of explosion. Great... Just great. All he needed was another inner or middle ear injury. Chances were if he’d burst his left eardrum _again_ what little hearing he’d retained on that side was probably gone. Although it all depended on how bad it was and how long it had been since the injury, what treatment they’d tried.

Clint had no idea how long it had been, and he shuddered to think that he was receiving medical attention from someone who didn’t know his medical history... or did they?

Thinking about his painful and mysteriously immobile left arm, Clint slowly, carefully rolled up his head—which felt like a swollen ten-ton weight—until he could see his arm. _Not handcuffed._ There was absolutely nothing to suggest Clint was in custody. No chains, no leg irons, no guard at the door. _What did that mean?_

Taking another steadying breath he began the arduous task of reconstructing what he _did_ remember. It didn’t help that in addition to the more recent head injury he’d been in varying states of pain and delirium for the last week. The fever made things foggy and fuzzy, especially the parts where he actually _was_ hallucinating. He remembered heading north towards Kazakhstan. He had been just outside Tikrit, not yet at the border, when something had happened... Shooting, noises, fighting, a _tank_? Right it had been some sort of battle. No one had noticed him. No one had been chasing him. He must have gotten caught up in the crossfire. Well, it kind of explained why he wasn’t locked up, being dissected in a government lab or being reprogrammed by Hydra. If it was someone else’s war, someone else’s fight, chances were they might think he was just another civilian caught up in the mess. For now. He wondered how long he had before they took a closer look. Before someone treating him recognized who he was and called in reinforcements. He didn’t exactly look local, and tourists tended not to go moseying through war zones... especially not armed. After all, even collapsed and unstrung, his bow had to be kind of suspicious... it didn’t really look like the kind of bow a hunter would use.

 _His bow_... 

Clint swallowed against the sudden surge of panic that washed through him, bile rising in his throat. His bow. He needed that bow. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t use it, if he had no arrows, if it would give him away faster than his own face, he _needed_ it. Really, really needed it. It was his. He was an archer, a marksman. Having a bow was one of the only lines of continuity that stretched through his life, the only feature that made Clint, Clint. Made him Hawkeye. Who was Hawkeye without a bow?

He’d lost Phil, lost Nat (at least for now), lost S.H.I.E.L.D., lost the sky... if he lost the damn bow he wasn’t going to have anything of himself anymore. It was irreplaceable. 

He swallowed. Swallowed again. Breathed deep enough to stop the worst of the panic. It might be here. It wasn’t necessarily lost. He could find it. He _would_ find it. It wouldn’t help to lose it and attract more attention to himself.

Having a goal sharpened his focus and for the first time in—well at least a week, since the fever had first gotten really bad, he just didn’t have any idea how long it had been since then. So goal. Plan... what could he do? 

The problem, of course was that Clint didn’t know what was wrong with him. He assumed he was no longer dying of sepsis. If they hadn’t dealt with the infection, he’d be dead by now. Also as groggy as he was feeling it felt more like the mixed effects of a head injury and drugs, not fever. He knew he’d been shot and stabbed and the evidence suggested he’d hit his head and been in some sort of explosion, but what else? What the hell was up with his arm?

Heart fluttering with nerves, Clint took stock of his body, at least the parts he was sure he could feel and focus on. His throat was raw, sore, scratchy, suggesting he’d been intubated recently. He could feel his feet and wiggle his toes, but his whole body ached when he did so. At least it meant he could walk out of there, at least in theory. His right arm was fine, which was good and all, but n9t a great relief. He needed both hands to shoot a bow, but his left arm definitely took more strain. Also, being left handed generally meant simple tasks like eating and brushing teeth were a lot harder if his left arm was incapacitated. He’d broken it once as a teenager, a tiny fracture that under normal circumstances would have taken almost no time to heal, but at the time he thought he’d starve before it got better—he couldn’t shoot a bow, couldn’t break down or set up the other acts, could barely tie his own shoes. He’d been terrified he’d never shoot again, scared Barney would leave him, almost certain the circus would kick him out. 

Pulling the bowstring had hurt for almost a year afterwards. He’d been lucky as an adult since joining S.H.I.E.L.D. the only time he’d injured his bow arm was when he was 24, and that was the same clusterfuck in which he’d lost his hearing, so the recovery had been well... he hadn’t even been focusing on his arm and it had been nine months before he was steady enough to even think about getting on the range.

At least his vision seemed okay. He had hints of diplopia, which, yeah, concussion, but for the most part he was able to focus, and his peripheral vision was intact, which was vital, both for maintaining his prowess as world’s best archer and for not getting dead without access to hearing aids.

He flexed the fingers of his left hand carefully. So far so good. Tentatively, he flexed his elbow. It moved. _No nerve damage._ He let himself feel a little relief. Still, if he’d fucked up his rotator cuff or dislocated his shoulder, he could be screwed.

A little voice in the back of his head said maybe he wouldn’t need to be able to shoot a bow anymore. He wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. There was no S.H.I.E.L.D. He couldn’t exactly go back to the circus as an internationally wanted criminal. Someone would take notice and then he’d be back on the run.

 _You’ve been through this before._

So he turned his focus back to figuring out what was wrong with him. It would be so much easier if he could get his hands on his chart. But until he figured out why his arm felt _restrained_ he wasn’t about to try sitting up and rooting around at the end of the bed. Sure he’d make a run for it if he had to, no matter how much it hurt or how likely it was to kill him—under the circumstances dead was better than captured. 

But he didn’t want to die if he didn’t have to... and maybe, he realized, that was progress.  
He tried to lift his left arm again. Nothing. Again. 

“Oh fuck!” he breathed. At least, he hoped he breathed it. Clint had zero sense of volume control and the last thing he wanted to do was alert the medical staff to his attempts to escape. (Or at least assess his condition, because to be honest, he really didn’t think he was going anywhere quickly.)

Pain flared, not in his arm or shoulder, but in his chest, along his collar bone. Breathing through the pain, which hurt almost as much as trying to move, Clint fumbled with his right hand reaching up and patting his way across his chest. He felt bandages, tape, and— _ow_! Part of the swath of skin between sternum and shoulder was completely numb, but everything around that was a riot of pain. Okay, broken clavicle, and... yup, his upper arm was in an immobilizer, literally strapped down to try to keep him from doing exactly what he’d just tried to do. He felt a little further, reached his opposite elbow, felt an IV port there, which, combined with the port in the back of his left hand explained why as much of his left arm was as free as it was. Seeing as he had another port in the back of his right hand, it was fairly alarming too—and a testament to how badly he’d been hurt or at least how bad the infection had been. 

His hand brushed against his hospital gown, and he felt the telltale crackle of more tape, tapped out the edges of the dressing. Sutures... no _staples_ from the gunshot wound down along the length of the stab wound. It covered a slightly larger area than he remembered stitching and bandaging himself, which suggested more extensive surgery than he’d hoped, and well staples were a bitch to remove on one’s own. He’d had to do it twice, and never from such a large area. 

_Focus on the positives._

Well, he was still alive, and not yet in custody, from what he could tell. He was in on piece more or less, and while his shooting arm was out of commission, in time it would probably heal. His hospital room seemed quiet and out of the way, and either the hospital staff was severely overworked—entirely possible if he was there as a battle casualty—or 5hey weren’t monitoring him that closely. Between pain and emotional reactions his heart rate was spiking all over the place, yet no one had come running. 

_Or maybe I spoke too soon._

Movement in the corner of his eye was the only warning Clint got that someone was entering the room. No time to gather more information or make a plan. Clint let his right hand drop back down to the bed and closed his eyes, most of the way, feigning unconsciousness. He didn’t dare close his eyes all the way. The newcomer, a tallish woman with Asian features, moved so silently there were no vibrations, nothing to give her movements away. If he closed his eyes completely, all he’d have to go on would he air movement, and in his current condition, he didn’t want have anyone get that close to him without him knowing about it. 

She paused at the foot of his bed and picked up his chart, reading it. So, a doctor or a nurse, probably. _Or an assassin sent to kill you_ , the voice in the back of his mind supplied, tauntingly. Whoever she was, she was wearing scrubs and carried a stethoscope around her neck.

The woman turned away from him and began checking the monitors, pulling things from the cabinets on the side of the room. At least, that’s what Clint _thought_ she was doing. Her body was blocking his line of sight so he couldn’t be sure. 

She turned back, seemed to frown at the monitor, and brought a syringe up to inject in the IV port in Clint’s left elbow. 

He reacted on instinct, his free right hand flying up to grab her wrist, squeezing hard. His eyes snapped open, adrenaline surging through him. 

The woman’s hand stopped, needle frozen about a centimeter from the IV port. Her eyes widened and nostrils flared, and it _looked_ like she said, “Oh my god, you really are him,” in _English_ , but then again all Clint heard was the faintest murmur in his right earn so he couldn’t be sure. The next words out of her mouth appeared to be a string of swears in _Russian_ , so Clint really didn’t know.

He didn’t let go of her hand. 

She was talking _to_ him now, saying something about letting go of her hand or telling him what she wanted to do, perhaps. He wasn’t sure, with the flush of adrenaline clearing he was feeling exhausted and rung out. The language she was probably speaking wasn’t even registering. He knew he should try to listen, try to interpret the sounds coming in his right ear, but all he got was the indistinct buzz and beep of equipment. 

He opened his mouth to try to talk, but immediately thought better of it. He could feel the tickle building in the back of his throat, the threat of a good coughing jag, and given how much it hurt to breathe, he didn’t want to risk that. 

He mouthed “Nyet” and “don’t,” to cover his bases, but she was trying to release his grip, talking again, and he couldn’t make it out. She pointed at the IV.

He squeezed tighter, shook his head—regretted that instantly—and mouthed, “No, nyet, no,” again. 

She pulled back.

Clint felt his heart rate skyrocket. If she knew who he was and brought more help...

“No,” he tried again, but he couldn’t tell how loud the word came out or if he even made sound, and as he feared, the one word set off a cough that left him shaking, chest burning with stabbing pain. 

The woman was moving again, since Clint had let go of her wrist to try to cover his mouth. _No. Stop._

Much to Clint’s surprise, the woman stopped, something like recognition in her eyes. 

He ran through the possibilities. Could be she just recognized him as speaking some sort of sign, or recognized, “no.” Or maybe she did know some sign, but not ASL. She spoke Russian and English, which meant she could be local, or Russian, or Kazakh, and what sign language did they use? He couldn’t remember. If she knew BSL or a related language, he was screwed, because he knew how to swear in Auslan, and that was about it.

It was difficult given the restricted movement of his left arm, so he chose his words carefully. “Please. No injection. Where am I?”

The woman blinked, tilted her head, and began to sign, haltingly. “Hospital. Tashkent,” she finger spelled the latter, “this is morphine—”

Clint’s eyes went wide and he moved his right hand as if to grab her again.

“No, for pain,” she shook her head. “You just had surgery.”

“No,” Clint repeated, mouthing the word. “Too strong.”

She signed something back that looked a bit like “limited resources.” Her grammar was a little hinky, but the content seemed to be there. 

“Too strong,” he repeated. “What surgery?” 

Her eyes went wide, and her hands fluttered in uncertainty. 

“Can I see my chart?” he asked.

“It’s in Russian.”

“Not a problem.”

She seemed skeptical, one eyebrow quirked in disbelief, but she moved to the foot of the bed and retrieved his chart from its holder and presented it to Clint hesitantly.

He steadied it as best he could with his right hand and craned his neck upwards to get a better angle. Blinked. Blinked again, because it still hurt like hell to try to focus, and nearly jumped when the bed began to move, mechanical rumblings settling deep in his chest. 

Oh right. It was a hospital bed and the woman was raising it to make it easier for Clint to read. 

He mouthed a silent “thanks” and went back to trying to read. Most of the chart was handwritten, which was less than ideal. Clint’s comprehension of written Russian was excellent, and he’d seen enough medical charts in Russian to make out common medical abbreviations, but _handwriting_? That was something else. 

He flipped through the pages as best as he could one-handed and finally felt like he got the gist of what was going on. If he was reading the date correctly, he’d been in the hospital for three days. He probably did have a concussion, but it was very slight, so much so that the CT scan was inconclusive. That explained why he mostly felt tired, in pain, and had trouble focusing. It wasn’t good news, but compared to what could have happened, it was a relief. 

They’d gotten the infection under control, and Clint’s temperature had been stable for about 24 hours. Also, his shoulder joint was apparently fine. 

That was the extent of the good news. 

The rest of the information had his heart rate picking up as sweat broke out on his forehead. How the hell was he going to stay on the run? How long would his recovery be?

Apparently whatever blast he’d been near had been on his left. In addition to the bullet graze on his hip and the stab wound in his side, he’d taken shrapnel throughout his left flank and back. His left ear drum had burst and he’d sustained a hairline fracture or his temporal bone. (There went any hope of getting any hearing back.) And to top it all off, he’d broken his left clavicle badly enough that they’d had to set it with screws. Even when that healed, drawing a bowstring was going to hurt like hell and the rehab—even it had taken place at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility—would take months. 

He didn’t have months. He didn’t have _days_. For all he knew there was a platoon of U.S. Marines or Uzbek Special Forces or Hydra agents on the other side of the door waiting to take him into custody.

What could he do? How could he fight?

His hands started to shake and the words started to swim before his eyes. If they tried to take him now, he was powerless to stop them. It was the closest to despair that he’d come since he’d seen the Nat’s testimony on the news.

Movement distracted him. The woman was signing something. _Safe_? He watched her hands and lips and grasped the meaning— _At least let me give you a little. I’ll keep you safe._

“Okay,” he mouthed. He didn’t trust her. Didn’t know who she was, but what choice did he have? It didn’t take long once the morphine hit his system for the lure of unconsciousness to pull him back under.

~~~

Over the next few days, he learned more about the doctor. Her name was Jamaal. She had studied and practiced in the States for 15 years before a friend convinced her to sign up for a stint in Medicines Sans Frontiers. When war had spread to the former USSR, she’d headed there. She was Kazak by birth and spoke Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek, as well as English and French, and so she’d wound up in Tashkent when things really went to shit.

She’d learned ASL during her residency from one of the other residents.

She’d recognized Clint from the start, had rescued his bow, and was doing her best to keep him out of the eyes and ears of anyone who might be too interested.

The problem was, the U.S. Army had shown up—part of some anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. task force and had made a stink and some _other_ shady folks had shown up—Clint assumed Hydra, but he couldn’t be sure—and they were now coming through the morgue trying to identity his body. When they finished with the morgue, they’d hit the hospital proper. 

The good news was everyone seemed to think Clint was dead.

The bad news was they knew he’d been in the explosion and they were intent on finding him, dead or alive. It was turning into an inter-agency race of sorts, with more suits and spooks showing up by the hour.

Clint wasn’t really well enough to go anywhere with his torso full of staples and sutures, a still-healing concussion, skull fracture, and excruciatingly painful collar bone, but he had no choice.

Jamal snuck him out of the hospital and offered him a place to stay. He stayed for 4 days until his wounds had healed enough to move on and continued the trek to Volgograd.

~~~

The thing was, Clint had never gotten over Phil.

Well, yes, okay, it had only been two years since Phil died, and everyone grieved in their own way and there were some things you never really got over. Clint was well aware of that. _Those realities_ , he knew. Clint’s life had never been sunshine and rainbows. He’d lost plenty of people: people who cared about him, people who cared _for_ him, people he cared about, people who should have cared about him but probably didn’t but he cared about anyway (his parents). Clint knew loss and he knew how it could sneak up on you. This wasn’t that.

Clint had never had the opportunity to mourn Phil. He’d never gotten closure. He’d never seen the body. He hadn’t even been there when Nick Fury went and ruined Phil’s masterpiece vintage Captain America trading card collection as part of a ploy to make the Avengers come together. (It was probably a really damn good thing for all involved that Clint wasn’t there for that. For every bit he could understand and see the visual impact that would have had, for all he could respect how masterfully manipulative and underhanded and effective it was at achieving its stated goal, he couldn’t get past how damn, fucking wasteful and destructive and disrespectful it was. Even thinking about it years later, he felt his hands clench and knuckles pop before he could get his rage under control.)

Clint hadn’t been there. And that was a big part of the problem. 

The last time he’d seen Phil...

The last time he’d seen Phil was right before Loki went and jabbed his fucking staff against Clint’s heart and turned him into a goddamn puppet! There had been no indication everything was about to go to hell. There was nothing special. No goodbyes, no “I love yous” they were at work, after all, and their relationship hadn’t exactly been S.H.I.E.L.D sanctioned.

Afterwards. after Loki... Nat had told him, but he hadn’t really heard her. During the entire battle of New York, it hadn’t sunk in. To this day, he didn’t know if that was because she’d been too quiet (a legitimate issue), if she hadn’t really done it, if he hadn’t believed her, if he’d misheard her, if he’d still been not all there in his head or what. 

After the battle, well Stark had told him, all blunt and tactless, but still doing the right thing. 

Even then, he’d half-wondered if it had been a lie from Fury designed to motivate them.

Within 12 hours after the battle, Clint was really pretty sure Fury was telling the truth. He was also sure that as far as he (Clint) was concerned, that was irrelevant. By that time, Clint had been in PsyOps undergoing what would end up being four months of testing and interrogation as S.H.I.E.L.D. had worked to figure out if the programming was truly broken, if he was actually back to being Clint Barton, if there were any Easter Eggs or boobie traps or triggers that would snatch him away again, if he was really in control, if there were any lasting effects. About half of the testing was aimed at actually making things better for Clint (or at least safer for Shield) the other half seemed to be pure science aimed at understanding Loki’s staff or the Chitauri scepter or whatever they wanted to call it... that research didn’t particularly care what happened to Clint. 

When he wasn’t in testing, he’d been in interrogation, a process that at times had been surprisingly nonadversarial. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to know what secrets were compromised, who knew them, which of those people were still alive and who they were or might be working with. Clint had wanted to help, to mitigate as much damage as he could, to prove his loyalty, so cooperating had been easy, even when the interrogation methods weren’t... “just to make sure.”

Now Clint couldn’t stop wondering how much of that had been for real and how much of it had been to help Hydra within S.H.I.E.L.D. to gain more intel, more leverage for their plans. It would be the sort of agonizing what-if that would have tortured Clint, kept him awake at night, except that it wasn’t just him who had fallen for it. It wasn’t just him... they were all, to the last man, apparently, patsies, morons, chumps. Sucked in and drank the Kool-Aid. Every last one rolling over and giving it up, not having a clue who the man behind the curtain was or what he was really doing.

But that was now. At the time, Clint had been so wracked with guilt he’d given in and gone willingly, all the while believing (or at least hoping) there was an end to the tunnel and a light at the end of it—the promise of a return to some sense of normalcy, some version of his past life. 

He really should have known better, shouldn’t he?

During the four months he was in lockup, he missed Phil’s funeral. By the time they let him out, hiss personal effects had been put in storage, and Natasha had been re-partnered with Steve. They were running all their missions with S.T.R.I.K.E. and Rumlow and Clint...

Well Clint had been a liability that S.H.I.E.L.D. just couldn’t quite throw away—one of their favorite weapons permanently attached to unreliable software. The title of world’s best marksman belonged to someone S.H.I.E.L.D. would never quite trust was on their side.

Clint had spent another two months on desk duty, which was hardly unheard-of, and he kept thinking maybe soon... next review, next week, next month, they’d be happy enough to let him go back to his old team, to the old work he’d done. But his old team was gone. Dead (Phil) or reassigned (Nat). And no one much wanted him going near anything involving the Avengers or Phil or New York or Loki.

He’d asked if he could help with rebuilding New York, fixing some of the destruction he’d caused, but he’d been turned down with some muttering about PR and waste of assets. He’d made noises about visiting the cemetery where Phil was buried—Dr. Banner had even offered to take him out there... unsurprisingly, that had been shut down when Clint had been called up to go on a week-long survival recert training exercise. 

Sitwell—the lying, back-stabbing, disloyal bastard—had sat him down afterwards and had explained how S.H.I.E.L.D. was uncomfortable with Clint reconnecting with people and places that were potential triggers and he had to understand it was as much for his mental health as it was for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s safety. He’d nodded feeling more guilty and ashamed than he had wronged for being kept from Phil... or rather closure about Phil. After all, they didn’t know what Phil had been to him, had meant to him. So they couldn’t know how it was fucking with him not to get to say goodbye.

After that, they’d sent him back in the field. Solo missions. Long-term surveillance, long-range wet work, always in the ass-end of nowhere. He’d spent two months in the mountains of Peru, one month stuck on a single rooftop in Chechnya, six weeks in the Congo, and two months in the rural Qinghai Province of China. 

He didn’t realize the anniversary had passed until he got a message from Nat about the memorial they’d had, how obnoxiously over the top Stark was about it, but how pissed he was that Fury hadn’t let Clint come. She’d said she missed him. That he would have liked the memorial. That Phil would have liked it too. That Phil would have forgiven him. That Phil would have given Fury a piece of his mind for excluding Clint, wouldn’t have let that happen.

It had been about then that reality had started to sink in. There was no going back. There was no return to normalcy. This was it. Fury didn’t trust him anymore... well Clint wasn’t sure if Fury had ever trusted Clint, trusting people wasn’t really his thing. But Fury had trusted Phil and Phil had trusted Clint. Now Phil was dead and it was Clint’s fault, and there was no one to tell Fury it was okay to trust Clint again. He’d hoped at first, it would be like when they’d brought in Natasha... but then it had been Phil who’d believed them, who’d given Nat a chance, who convinced Fury to give her a chance.

But Phil was gone. Fury’d poured every last ounce of trust and respect into Nat, the only member of their team to emerge from the debacle relatively unscathed, and Clint...

He didn’t question or fight the assignments after that. He still had his rank and level 7 clearance and his damn parking space at the Triskelion, but it was in name only. But in the year since he’d had too much time alone with his thoughts. Too much time to dwell on Phil. On his loss. On the complete lack of closure.

Clint could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he’d been in the same room as Nat since New York. They used to see each other every day. And Nat was probably the only person who could have helped him to deal with it, start to move on. She could have shown him the path to work through the gnawing maw of guilt, the complete inability to believe Phil was really gone (the paralyzing certainty he was). That brief conversation they’d had aboard the Helicarier had helped. So much. If he’d had another dozen he might have managed to get _unstuck_ from the perpetual uncertainty he’d found himself in.

But he hadn’t pushed for more contact with Nat. _He’d been too afraid they’d say no._ And now everyone was hunting him, and she was in the wind. 

He’d never visited Phil’s grave. He’d probably never get to now. Clint couldn’t envision a scenario in which he could ever get into the U.S. without detection. Their security was too good and he was too well known. Even if he made it across a border somewhere he’d never make it to the cemetery. It was possible... if he was willing to let himself be captured afterwards they’d let him get close enough. Maybe someone somewhere calling the shots at some agency would understand the significance, would give him 5 minutes and let him come in quietly... or even just give him five minutes and take the head shot. They might as well. There really wasn’t much left for Clint. Nothing for him to do, to be, nowhere to go. It was only a matter of time before someone caught him, used him, unmade him again. But no.

He shut down that train of thought. He’d made his decision. If he’d wanted to suicide by cop the moment to do it would have been back in that damn cafe in Charikar. He had intel he needed to deliver. He needed to find Natasha. And then... And then...

Maybe visiting Phil’s grave would be something to put on his bucket list. Maybe when he was 70 or 80 if he somehow managed to live that long, the mess would have blown over, he’d be unrecognizable and presumed long dead and maybe then... after a lifetime spent as what? A hermit living in the wilds of northern Russia, hunting Caribou with his bow to survive? He’d go to the U.S., a tourist, and make his way to a grave whose significance no one knew and then, finally then, he’d get to say goodbye.

It was never gonna happen. He’d be lucky if he could live long enough to find Natasha. But a man could dream, and sometimes dreams were enough to sustain him.

So Clint went back to putting one foot in front of the other and trudged on towards the Russian border.

~~~

Of course then there was the old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same... and wasn’t that the kicker? While Clint’s life, personal and professional ( _hell_ , his whole fucking _existence_ ) imploded, the loss of S.H.I.E.L.D. leaving him without a personal compass, utterly devoid of a direction in life, even his moral code shaken, the world around him continued in the same state of constant upheaval and strife as it always had. Everywhere he looked was someone’s war zone. Neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe, nation against nation, ideologue-driven insurgent group against shadowy 3-letter agency. The conflicts that existed before Hydra revealed itself, before S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall continued on with new conflicts heating up every day.

The world needed S.H.I.E.L.D. now more than ever, but now they were nowhere to be found. He’d heard Nat’s testimony about how Hydra had seeded so many of the conflicts, tried to drive the world to the brink and over so people would be desperate, give up their lives, their freedom, their choice in the name of “safety” in the form of complete and utter oppression. It was the same false freedom Loki’s staff had brought, and Clint was left wondering how the hell anyone could fall for that.

Then again, 20-20 hindsight and all that.

The problem was even though S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone and Hydra was back to lurking in the shadows (albeit a fairly overt lurking) and no longer pulling everyone’s strings, the mess they’d set in motion kept on trucking right along only now there was nothing and no one to put the brakes on.

Of course it was _worse_ than that too. The loss of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the revelation of Hydra had destabilized the even parts of the world that were stable before. As people and governments panicked and over-reacted to the loss other seized the opportunity to run amok and bully their neighbors, confident there was no one strong enough to stop them. Then there were all the official intelligence agencies and armies and police forces that started asserting themselves alongside all their unofficial, nonstate-linked (read: “terrorist”) counterparts as they jockeyed to make a name for themselves in the power vacuum left behind. 

Throw in a handful of natural disasters—an earthquake in the Pacific, an Ebola outbreak that spread out of Africa, record-breaking temperatures, and devastating wild fires, flooding in Asia and the US, and one might get the impression they were being punished for not submitting to Hydra’s will.

Sometimes Clint thought they were being punished for not fighting back strong enough.

Of course on top of all that Nat had to go and make it interesting. He understood why and he didn’t begrudge her one second for dumping all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s vast knowledge and deep dark secrets onto the internet. If he’d been in that situation, he probably would have done the same. And the effect wasn’t all bad. At least some people seemed to have gotten a clue that S.H.I.E.L.D. really were the good guys or at least trying to be, that they’d done some good, and not everyone S.H.I.E.L.D. was Hydra. 

But then there was the truly annoying and unfortunate side of setting all those secrets free... S.H.I.E.L.D’s ridiculously detailed personnel files.

In the old days, before Hydra, before the Chitauri invasion, before Loki, Clint was anonymous. Sure, go back far enough and there was some recognition of him in the Circus, but that was long enough ago and he’d still been young enough, that the recognizability didn’t carry over into his everyday life. He could go put on a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform and be just some nameless generic guy, he could go under cover and be someone else entirely. Better yet, people underestimated him—he wasn’t exceptionally tall or big or strong. He was lean and compact. Nothing about him screamed “world’s best marksman,” unless you were talking about a faded poster depicting hos 15-year-old self. He could shift his body language, make himself appear smaller, less threatening. Hell when most people saw the bow, they thought it was ridiculous, because _no one_ used a bow anymore. 

Everyone made snap judgments and those all lined up in Clint’s favor. _Nothing to see here; move along.”_

_Then came the Avengers publicity following the Battle of New York. Sometimes there was a hint of recognition. Sometimes people paid him a second glance. Once it almost blew his cover. In that way his misfortune of being distrusted by his superiors paid off. Stick him in the middle of nowhere and make him hide out, and things were fine. No one noticed him, and Clint was just fine with that._

_Then came the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and four straight weeks of Clint’s photo playing in heavy rotation on TV screens worldwide, on the most wanted list with a bounty on his head. Then came every last detail about his childhood, his military service, his _family issues_ , his ops, his skills, his likes and dislikes and successes and failures lined up for all to see—for all to read. Instead of being ignored, he was recognized. Instead of being under-estimated, everyone had already sized him up and developed the perfect counter attack. _

__

~~~

Clint left the message for Natasha and hung around Volgograd for a week, hoping she would get it and respond. He bought a prepaid cell phone, its number given to Natasha in the message he left, and waited for her call. But she didn’t call and she didn’t call, and he had to accept that maybe she wasn’t going to contact him. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. Maybe it was time for him to move on.

But move on where?

He’d left the message for Nat. If she followed the breadcrumbs, she would be able to find the cache of intel he’d gathered on von Strucker and decrypt it. If it came down to it, he could make more copies, hide a few more caches, maybe dig up another contact or two that might be trustworthy enough to be interested in what a supposedly dead Hydra operative was doing in Afghanistan working with a member of Ten Rings for the right reasons. 

Clint could make himself heard. He just didn’t want to be around to be found, not for anyone other than Nat. Given S.H.I.E.L.D.’s low opinion of him before its demise, he certainly couldn’t expect any better from anyone else. Anywhere he went he would be met with distrust at best, most likely hostility, revulsion, disgust. Assuming they didn’t shoot him on sight.

He couldn’t safely hang onto the phone any longer, so he sucked it up and ditched it. But before he did, he left a message on the voicemail. If Nat actually got his message and she tried to contact him, the voice mail would be good for another year. She’d be able to get into the account. Only Nat. She’d know the password. She’d hear it, and she’d know where to find him.

Resigned to his fate, Clint began the long trek towards St. Petersburg where he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could join a small fishing vessel, get out on the sea somewhere no one would recognize him, somewhere no one would care. Stick to small crews and small boats, use his strength and try not to die. And maybe, maybe if he lived long enough, he’d get to fulfill the number one (the only) item on his bucket list and visit Phil’s grave.

~~~

Time stopped. For a few moments Clint thought he was dreaming. He saw her from across the square. She looked beautiful. Radiant. Sure of herself and self-possessed in a way he had never seen her before. She wasn’t being the perfect imitation of someone else, the perfect solution to the moment’s problem. She was _her_ , not anyone else. And she was more alive than he’d seen in years. A piece of his past. A past now so long gone sometimes it felt like a dream.

Then their eyes met, and she closed the distance between them.

“Your hair’s still red,” he said.

She smiled. “And you still have your bow.”

He shrugged, winced as the action pulled on his still-healing collar bone and side. For a second he flashed back to the hospital in Tashkent, those few seconds when he’d thought his bow was gone, destroyed, lost forever. “I’ve been out of arrows since Tashkent and the bowstring snapped, but it still makes a pretty good staff.” He hadn’t spoken in ages. His throat stung with disuse, and he had no idea how loud his words were, how they sounded. He just hoped his voice didn’t carry too far. 

Tasha’s smile grew brighter, but her eyes seemed sad. “Your bow’s a part of you, same as my hair’s a part of me. It’s who you are.” Her words seemed so certain, so confidant...

And Clint, well... up until thirty seconds ago, Clint had been trying to work up the courage to join the crew of a fishing vessel bound for Halifax. He wasn’t so sure he knew anything about himself or where he was going.

“Who I was,” he said, looking away, eyes dropping in shame. This shouldn’t be so hard. Seeing Natasha is what’d motivated him, kept him going, kept him alive for the last three-and-a-half months. He’d got his wish. He found her (or she found him). She was here, a piece of his past he was sure he had lost, and he... and he...

_He didn’t deserve her._

Because despite everything, Natasha’d come out on top. People might recognize her and know who she is, but she’d found herself, or discovered something new, and she’d left Clint behind, just like the rest of them. He was a piece of her past and he should have stayed there.

Something touched his shoulder—Natasha’s hand, he realized—and snapped him back to the present. 

“Clint?” her lips were saying, and her expression suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.

“I’m not sure who I am anymore,” he admitted, with a sheepish smile, itching to break eye contact, but not doing it because it would mean effectively shutting her out, and he didn’t want to do that to either of them.

“Clint,” she said again, squeezing his shoulder tighter, and examining his face carefully. “Clint I can’t understand you.”

He blinked, wanted to shut it out. He was so tired and her being here meant he wasn’t convincing himself to hop on a fishing vessel of questionable seaworthiness, and he was so, so tired and relieved and lost and the effort...

But Natasha kept speaking. He could feel the vibrations of her words traveling up her arm into his shoulder. 

He tried to turn away.

Natasha’s fingers were gentle where they touched his cheek, turning his face back towards hers. It reminded him of something Phil would do, and the ever-present ache in his chest rose as a solid lump in his throat.

“You lost your hearing aids,” she said.

“Had to get rid of them,” he mouthed, hands signing along. 

“Damaged?” she spoke and signed, looking suddenly alarmed.

 _If only._ He shook his head. “Trackers,” he signed back not bothering to speak.

Nat’s eyes went wider still, taking a step back and giving him a onceover, her eyes searching, critical. Her lips kept tightening, and her fingers twitched several times, but she never asked a question. When she was done, she squeezed his shoulder tighter, locked eyes with his, and said “Come with me.”

~~~

Wherever Clint expected Natasha to lead him, it wasn’t here. The Grand Hotel Europe lived up to its name. It was posh and showy and fast-approaching it’s bicentennial. It was the sort of place Nat had stayed once when undercover as a minor countess... it wasn’t the sort of place they would have stayed with Phil or when they were on the run, it was nothing like a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house. It felt exposed and open and oh so very precarious.

When they entered the Hotel the Concierge greeted Nat with a smile, and called her by name. 

If Clint’s speachreading was correct, which considering the Concierge was presumably speaking Russian and not facing Clint head on, was somewhat questionable, he was pretty sure the Concierge addressed Nat as “Allianovna,” which considering it was her actual patronymic, suggested an almost unsettling degree of familiarity. Clint just blinked and followed Nat, who lead him by the hand back through the lobby to the elevators.

Clint was jumpy throughout the elevator ride—there were other people. Tourists, business people... Some of them seemed to recognize Nat, while others stared at him. Was it because she was a fixture at the hotel? Were they recognizing her? Recognizing him? Clint couldn’t tell. For all he knew people were staring because he appeared battered, dirty, homeless, and with questionable baggage, while Nat looked well-coiffed and stunning, and the two of them together were admittedly visually discordant and jarring.

She led him from the elevator to a corner suite—the Dostoyevsky suite, she informed him, which seemed very fitting—turned on the lights, drew all the blinds, and sat Clint on the edge of the bed. 

Clint sat there speechless, hands unmoving, face blank, and waited.

Nat approached him, slowly, cautiously, careful to come fully into his field of view before she moved towards him. When she finally did approach it was to lift his backpack, sliding it off his shoulders, but putting his collapsed bow and empty quiver next to his leg in easy reach.

It was textbook for handling a spooked asset.

Clint didn’t like being handled, or being an asset. But then again, it was the right thing to do and whatever else had happened, Nat still knew him well enough to know that.

Staying in his line of sight, she pulled up a chair from the nearby seating area and sat facing Clint, taking his hands into her own. The kiss when it came took Clint completely by surprise. Nat’s lips, moist and full and lush capturing Clint’s dry, cracked, scabbed ones. Her tongue was gentle, but persistent, licking her way inside his mouth, hut giving Clint control. If he’d wanted to stop, he could have pulled back, put on the breaks, and she would have stopped. He knew it.

It wasn’t the first time he’d kissed Natasha, or even the hundredth, and that wasn’t counting ops where one or both of them were under cover. No... Nat had been a special part of Clint (and Phil’s) lives since the beginning. Clint had kissed her, fucked her, arguably had made love to her... but that was nothing like this. Clint hadn’t kissed anyone since Phil, not even on an op. More importantly, no one had kissed or touched Clint like that, lovingly, caring, since Phil. It was... he’d forgotten what it felt like. 

When Nat finally pulled away and broke the kiss, Clint’s heart was pounding, the thump-thud rushing over the incessant whine of tinnitus in his right ear. 

“We thought you were dead. _I_ thought you were dead,” Nat murmured, well she might have been speaking normally, Clint couldn’t tell, but it looked like she was murmuring to him. 

Surprised, Clint raised an eyebrow in question. This wasn’t what he was expecting. He nodded, signaling Nat to continue.

She took a few moments, visibly composing herself in a way she wouldn’t do for outsiders. She squeezed Clint’s hands again before releasing them, leaving them to rest on his lap and began talking, signing as she spoke, so Clint wouldn’t miss anything.

“After the first couple of weeks, after the hearings, Tony started tracking people, trying to find our people before Hydra or the three-letter agencies did.”

And that made sense, because that was the sort of thing Tony Stark would do, and with everything on the internet for all to see...

But Nat was shaking her head, “It’s not like you’re thinking, not quite anyway. Hill’s working for Tony. Tony’s well... to say he’s pissed would be an understatement, but you know how he gets about his tech falling into the wrong hands—”

Clint nodded, signed, “Hydra in Tashkent had old stark weapons and a repulsor.” He fingerspelled the last word.

Nat nodded, “Well there’s that and then there’s the whole Hydra inside of S.H.I.E.L.D. thing, destroying the one good thing his father did, that kind of thing. So, he looked for you. At first, he couldn’t find you, but no one could, so it was good news. Then you showed up in Afghanistan and he had you for a while, but then there were the Attacks in Tashkent and... We knew you had been wounded, before, didn’t know how bad... When no one could find you afterwards, we thought you were dead, or possibly captured, but if you were captured, everyone was staying quiet about it, and that would have been... unusual to say the least, so we weren’t sure.

“So when I got your message—”

“I thought you hadn’t gotten it?” he signed, still not trusting his voice.

“I did, but I was worried it was really from Hydra or maybe the NSA... they were very _intent_ on the idea of bringing you in. We have reason to believe Hydra has the Chitauri scepter.”

Clint felt the blood drain from his face at that revelation, but then again, it was something he had already suspected and feared, so it wasn’t so much a shock as it was a terrifying confirmation that his paranoia was warranted.

“We figured—I thought if Hydra had you, they’d try to subject you to it again, force you under its influence, but I also knew you’d die before you let that happen, so I was... You could be dead and the message could have been based on whatever Hydra had cleaned before you succeeded.” Nat swallowed, and he knew she was showing real pain, not the made-up, manipulative crap she usually showed to everyone else.

Without thinking, his right hand moved to her knee and squeezed returning the reassurance. She wasn’t wrong. If he’d been captured, if he was captured, he would do anything to ensure he wasn’t used against his will as someone else’s weapon. 

“So when I got your message... I wasn’t sure it was really you. I took the intel, but contact... Let’s just say I’ve had more than a few run-ins with people and governments who thought they could bring me in, use me, prove I’m too dangerous to be allowed out in the world.”

Clint winced at that.

“But then I got the voicemail, and I knew it had to be you. Really you.”

“Why?” Clint asked, the word bursting from his lips before he could worry about how it sounded, whether it was too loud. 

“Because you sounded like you when you’ve gone too long without hearing yourself, and in case you hadn’t noticed, this—” she motioned at Clint’s ears, “wasn’t in your file.”

Clint’s head cocked to the side in question.

“Ah, yeah, and if you were under someone’s thumb, they would have gotten new hearing aids for you, which brings me back to my earlier question, what the hell happened?”

Clint opened his mouth, only to hand his head in frustration. He hadn’t talked in so long, hadn’t needed to, hadn’t wanted to risk it, and now when he felt like he should speak, _voice_ the trials he’d faced, the words froze in his throat. 

But Nat just waited patiently, regarding Clint with rapt attention. 

So, weary, Clint raised his hands and began signing. He told Nat everything—about the mission, seeing Baron von Strucker, heading into town to contact S.H.I.E.L.D., seeing the cataclysm that had happened in his absence, seeing Nat, seeing his own face, his identity broadcast for all to see, the heartbeats of panic that had followed (how he’d almost given in)... He showed her the places S.H.I.E.L.D had hidden trackers in his bow and quiver. He let her fingers trace the now-healed scar on his thigh. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he admitted. “I was going to try to disable the tracker or at least fuck with the GPS so I could still use the hearing aids, but I got... interrupted,” he signed. “I knew I didn’t have enough time.

~~~

Clint stayed with Natasha for two wonderful weeks. He almost got into a rhythm almost felt like this could have been the new day-to-day. She worked with him, mined her new contacts and was able to get him a hearing aid so he wasn’t at quite such a disadvantage. She managed to get him more arrows, restring his bow, and helped him to heal psychologically, giving him back some of the strength and self-confidence Loki had taken over two years before.

But he couldn’t stay forever. He had intel, and a new understanding, and he needed to try to work to get it done. He wouldn’t ever be happy hiding out on a fishing boat, he knew that now. It certainly wouldn’t respect Phil’s memory. 

And Nat, well, Nat needed to find herself, keep finding herself. Build a new cover identity, uncover more about her past, find out where she’d been so she could figure out where to go. 

Now that he knew Nick Fury was still out there, hunting Hydra, and that Cap and Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, were on their own hunt, researching the winter soldier, looking for ties and clues and trying to bring Steve’s best friend back from the dark place Hydra had sent him, Clint wanted to get involved. He decided not to try to find Fury because well, if Fury didn’t wanna get found, he wasn’t gonna get found. But Steve and Sam… he could maybe help them.

So at the end of the second week, Clint set out for Odessa, the last place Steve had been in contact with Nat.

~~~

It really wasn’t a surprise when he arrived in Odessa and Rogers and Wilson were nowhere to be found. He could find evidence they’d been there—people always saw, even if they didn’t believe, and Captain Fucking America running around in fake glasses and a hoodie was memorable enough for more than a few people to take notice. Of course, _asking_ about Rogers drew attention to Clint and it was only a matter of time before his interest (and presence) filtered back to the wrong people.

It was a Tuesday (of course it was, didn’t worlds always end on Tuesday?), and Clint had gathered enough leads to know Rogers and Wilson had left the country, headed for Minsk chasing rumors of an old KGB facility located suspiciously close to both a refrigeration plant and a robotics firm. It sounded a little obvious, and Clint hoped like hell it wasn’t a trap, but then again, if he was in Rogers’ shoes, if it was someone he’d loved... if Phil had suddenly come back from the dead and Clint had a lead... he would have to follow it, even if he knew, deep down, it was definitely a trap. So he understood why Rogers had gone, and he was prepared to follow. But he had his own demons to haunt him, his own hounds in pursuit.

Clint was preparing to catch the next third-class rail coach to the border confident he would be able to slip through customs—thanks in no small part to Nat’s guidance—when they found him. At first he didn’t realize anything was wrong. The square had been crowded, but not overly so. He moved with the general press of bodies towards the smaller side street that led back to the no-name hotel he’d been crashing in for the past two weeks. (It was nothing to write home about, but it sure as hell beat holing up in caves or crashing on the side of the road. 

It was the noise that got to him, or rather the sudden lack of it. The hearing aid Nat had acquired for him wasn’t fabulous—well actually they were pretty damn good for the regular market, but they did little for Clint who had depended upon beyond-the-bleeding-edge technology to achieve the level of auditory comprehension to which he’d grown accustomed over the past fifteen or so years. As much as he hated to say it, StarkTech _helped_ and the stuff Stark had made for the military (in the past, which S.H.I.E.L.D. had always appropriated) and the special projects Stark had completed for S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, well up until a few months before, had really made a difference. With the technology available on the open market, there was _almost_ no way Clint could achieve any meaningful degree of hearing in his left ear. Well, he could have resorted to a bone conduction hearing aid, which might have worked, but given the often less-than-sanitary, physically demanding nature of his work, the unpredictable access to medical care and the frequently impossibly tight spaces in which he had to work, having something that required an implant drilled into his skull was a risk Clint couldn’t afford. 

So without Tony’s special tech, Clint was left with a high-powered, yet ordinary, behind-the-ear hearing aid for his right ear, which gave him about half the amplification and understanding to which he was accustomed and on his right side only… Nat had contacts all right, but Clint hadn’t really wanted to chance sticking around long enough to have a bi-cross aid fitted, and that would have taken some getting used to, so he just decided to make do.

It really wasn’t a surprise when he arrived in Odessa and Rogers and Wilson were nowhere to be found. He could find evidence they’d been there—people always saw, even if they didn’t believe, and Captain Fucking America running around in fake glasses and a hoodie was memorable enough for more than a few people to take notice—but nothing that said they were _still there_. The problem was gathering evidence required _asking_ questions. And asking questions about Rogers drew attention to _Clint_ —attention Clint really didn’t want—so it was only a matter of time before his interest (and presence) filtered back to the wrong people.

~~~

It was a Tuesday (of course it was, didn’t worlds always end on Tuesday?), and Clint had gathered enough leads to know Rogers and Wilson had left the country, apparently headed for Minsk chasing rumors of an old KGB facility located suspiciously close to both a refrigeration plant and a robotics firm. It sounded a little obvious, and Clint hoped like hell it wasn’t a trap, but then again, if he was in Rogers’ shoes, if it was someone he’d loved... if Phil had suddenly come back from the dead and Clint had a lead... he would have to followed it, even if he knew, deep down, it was definitely a trap. So he understood why Rogers had gone, and he was prepared to follow. But he had his own demons to haunt him, his own hounds in pursuit.

Clint was preparing to catch the next third-class rail coach to the border, confident he would be able to slip through customs—thanks in no small part to Nat’s guidance—when they found him. At first he didn’t realize anything was wrong. The square had been crowded, but not overly so. The press of people milling around, darting from storefront to storefront in the growing October chill wasn’t an excuse. He couldn’t blame it on his hearing either. He’d been traipsing all over Asia effectively completely deaf for most of the last six months and he’d managed okay. The little bit of auditory information he was getting from Nat’s black market only helped, and the new information wasn’t so new it was throwing off his perception or situational awareness.

No, Clint just fucked up. Take anyone, no matter their training, no matter their experience, their determination, throw them undercover long enough, on the run long enough, keep the pressure on and the outlets few and far between, ensure they have to be on 24/7/365 and sooner or later they would slip up. 

If they were really lucky, the slip up would happen at a moment when the biggest threats weren’t around, when their enemies weren’t listening, when there was no one watching to capture their mistake. If they were a little less lucky they’d be able to manage the fallout with minimal personal or collateral cost.

These days luck and Clint weren’t even in the same hemisphere.

It was a split second of inattention. Clint let his mind wander, planning what he was going to do when he got to Minsk, double checking the mental checklist he had for avoiding capture on the train. For a few seconds he was breathing the fall air, taking in the sights around him, and the part of his brain that was always on alert—constant vigilance is the price of freedom—checked out. He kept walking, headed toward the south end of the square, and blinked.

In the handful of heartbeats that his focus had slipped three men had slipped into the crowd behind him, following, each coming from a slightly different angle. In his peripheral vision, he could see another individual approaching from his right, and another, a very tall woman, approaching from his left. Another person walked toward him from ahead, closing off another avenue of escape. They were professionals, Hydra, maybe, or some breed of US intelligence, or agents of any of the multitude of other countries and organizations that were after him. They could have even been particularly well-motivated mercenaries.

Whatever and whoever they were, they were dressed a little too similarly, their clothes a little too... flexible. They were walking faster than the rest of the crowd with unwavering focus and they were closing in, herding Clint towards a small alleyway up ahead, off to the right away from the press and crush of people, with shitty sightlines and a dozen darkened entryways that could be concealing more agents.

Clint made a few abortive half-steps towards escape, watched as the operatives moved in sync to compensate. Two more steps and he’d be in the alley. One more. 

As soon as he’d cleared the crowd, just as he’d expected, two more tangos materialized out of the darkened doorways ahead. Clint waited, on his toes, monitoring, feeling, focusing… waiting for them to make the first move. 

The tall woman coming up behind him struck first. Clint caught her unawares with a back thrust elbow to the solar plexus as he ducked to dodge the advancing strike of one of the two agents from the doorway. The woman’s companions had caught up with them now, and made a grab for Clint, even as he twisted, sidestepped and struck with the flat of his hand.

It was a free-for-all now, seven on one, the only thing working in Clint’s favor was the relatively confined space. They couldn’t all attack him at once because they kept getting in each other’s way. He took several blows on his forearms, his still-healing clavicle twinging with the strain. 

The disadvantage, of course, was at this close range, he didn’t have room to draw his bow, let alone time to fire. He couldn’t really go for a gun either for the same reasons. He managed to get his knife from his belt and into his left hand, slashing to drive them back, try to open up some room. 

He saw a blue flash out of his peripheral vision. _Shit_

He’d heard of those in one of the last S.H.I.E.L.D. briefings he’d received, and Nat had warned him about them. It was a… night—no an _ICER_. A particularly powerful nonlethal weapon that used the same drug Fury’d used to fake his own death to incapacitate a target. Even a graze from one of them could take him down and he wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d wake up hours from now already in custody.

He’d fall on his own knife before that happened. 

And really, what was stopping him now? He’d seen Nat. She had the information about Strucker. He’d left a message for Rogers. If he died now, the intel was in the right hands. And they wouldn’t be able to use him as a weapon.

Someone landed a kidney punch, and Clint found himself on this knees, gasping. He’d managed to hold onto the knife though, and in a split second, he had it pressed to his jugular. A quick jab and slash and he’d bleed out faster than they could shoot him. 

The tangos caught on fast, their attacks stilling in unison as Clint knelt there, knife to his throat. He swallowed thinking of Phil, calculations lightning-fast rushing though his mind, making sure there was no other way—making sure he’d get the job done. 

_Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack._

The tangos stilled and dropped one after the other in close succession, something inky blue seeping into their veins from the point of impact.

Knife still at his throat, he looked up, turned slowly on his knees to find another woman standing over him, the crumpled bodies of the—incapacitated, not dead—operatives arrayed around him like the petals of a particularly grotesque flower. She was average height, older, Asian, wearing a white coat, and holding an ICER. _Shit._ He realized now he’d seen her earlier, but he’d pegged her for a local or maybe a tourist. 

Now everything about her _screamed_ CIA. “This goes for you too.” He pressed the knife harder against his throat. “I don’t want trouble. I just want to disappear. I don’t know any secrets Romanov didn’t already spread to the world. I wasn’t exactly on Fury’s Christmas card list if you know what I mean, but I’m not Hydra, I’m not mind controlled, and I will not be taken alive.” He glanced down at the bodies around them. “I appreciate the rescue. But I’m not keen to play guinea pig or punching bag or pin cushion for the CIA anymore than I would have for anyone they would have sold me to. So let me go or I’m dead before you squeeze the trigger.”

The woman frowned at him, lowered the weapon. “I’m not here to kill you Agent Barton. And I’m not here on behalf of the CIA.”

 _Yeah right_. He rolled his eyes. “Then who are you playing messenger for?” he hedged, still not moving the knife or getting off his knees.

“Melinda May.”

Clint’s eyebrows shot up jaw going slack. “Who’s May working for these days?” 

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“They kind of imploded… rather messily.”

This time she tsked and rolled her eyes, but she was holstering the ICER as she did it. She extended her hand to Clint. “And they rose from the ashes. I’m not supposed to know this, but I was the only one Melinda trusted with the message.”

“Yeah, and what message is that?” Clint asked, skeptically, ignoring the proffered assistance and rolling to his feet, trying to hide the wince as his back spasmed where he’d been punched. 

“Director Coulson needs you.”

Something flipped in Clint’s stomach and his heart seemed to stutter in his chest. “What?” he asked. His hearing was shit, but he knew what Coulson’s name looked like on someone’s lips, and…

She repeated herself, signing this time, using the name sign for Coulson that only Clint, Nat, May, and a handful of others (all of whom but Fury were dead) even knew. 

“Coulson’s dead.” And did she say _Director_?

“So are you,” she answered, pulling something from her pocket and holding it out for Clint.

He looked at it skeptically. 

“It’s an encrypted satellite phone coded to your biometrics and DNA. It’s programmed to show you the location of S.H.I.E.L.D’s base. I don’t know where it is, so don’t ask. The phone won’t work for anyone else, and I have no way to replace it, so don’t lose it.” She cocked her head to the side and looked him up and down. “Don’t drop your guard again and stop leaving your right side open. I know you’re trying to protect your left because you can’t hear on that side, but you’re leaving yourself open.” She nodded at the unconscious form of the tall woman who’d attacked him who was slumped to Clint’s right, ICER in her hand. “She would have got the shot off before slit your throat.”

“Thank you,” Clint said uncertainly, accepting the satellite phone. 

“Take care of yourself, Barton. You always were one of my favorites,” she added, turned, and walked away, heading back the way she’d came.

~~~

The mysterious CIA agent’s coordinates were good. When Clint had wandered far enough off the beaten path to believe there could be a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base lurking over the dunes with camels as neighbors, he had whipped out the encrypted sat phone she had given him and fired up the GPS and held his breath.

The coordinates didn’t actually decrypt, but a pin appeared on the onscreen map and he was able to follow it to its origin. It took longer than Clint had expected, partly because he ran into a few dunes and other obstacles that required him to backtrack and go around, so when he was finally on top of the bleeping ping, it was near dark and the temperature had slid most of the way from chilly cold desert sun to ball-freezingly unbearable. If he was going to be out here any longer he’d have to stop to bundle up. 

Right when Clint’s hands were starting to shake too much to go on, the flashing light on the phone started flickering faster and faster until it was pulsating into a bright glow. Clint could just make out an escalating whine turning into a shriek as he tried to figure out what was happening.

A strong vibration shook the desert and sand seemed to bubble and shimmy to the side as a hatch slid open in the ground before him, opening up to reveal a sloped passageway. He took a few moments to weigh the the options again and decided “what the hell.” He’d come all this way.

Tucking the phone into his jacket pocket, he stepped into the shaft and followed it into a large hangar that was currently occupied by an old-style S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile command transport and a Quinjet. His fingers twitched at the sight of the Quinjet—it had been so long since he’d flown one, so long since he’d been in the air. His eyes lingered at it, longing, admiring, as he circled around it moving on in the underground hangar into the base’s hidden depths. 

“Freeze!” someone shouted. 

Only Clint’s hearing aid barely caught it in the distorted acoustics of the large space, and he reacted belatedly, turning too fast, too casually, coming face-to-face with an array of agents that had gathered before him. _Shit!_ This close and a moment’s distraction got him surrounded? Mentally kicking himself, Clint raised his hands.

“I said freeze!” the guard shouted again, this time he raised his voice enough that Clint’s hearing aid cut out somewhere in the middle in a vain attempt to protect his hearing from further damage. 

He raised his hands higher, bow still strapped across his back, bag dangling from his left arm. He felt the subtle vibration of boot treads on metal as someone approached him from behind. He didn’t flinch, didn’t turn around, not even when he felt gunmetal, cool and unyielding, against the back of his neck.

“Identify yourself,” the tall, burlier man with the gun shouted again. 

“Set your weapons down, now,” a shorter, portly man ordered, running into place. He’d come from somewhere unseen... deeper underground maybe? 

Clint shuffled his feet to the side so he could better see wherever the short guy had come from. The agent behind him jabbed the gun harder against the base of his skull, the pressure threatening. It wasn’t necessarily the most effective use of a gun, but given that he hadn’t seen the person (or people) behind him, he couldn’t really afford to try spinning out of the way, and the person behind him knew that. Clint stilled raising his hands slightly, moving slowly, not wanting to give anyone a reason to shoot.

 

“I can explain,” Clint said, uncertain of his voice and volume in the cavernous, echoing space.

Someone must have said something else, because there was a pause, and then the short man said, “Answer the question,” and leveled his sidearm at Clint’s head.

There were too many people and they had surrounded him on all sides, meaning he couldm’t see half the people who might be talking. He was beyond reluctant to set down his gear and weapons? Especially if this whole message was actually a ploy to get Clint to turn himself in. But the people who surrounded him were all wearing some sort of etched, hologram-covered thing around their necks, and the IDs seemed to have a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on them, so he was willing to bet at least even odds these people really were some remnant or reformation of S.H.I.E.L.D., one that remained loyal to the initial purpose.

Then again, he’d heard about countless “S.H.I.E.L.D.” transgressions—terrorist attacks, assassinations, deployment of alien tech and bio weapons—that he would bet his life were really HYDRA, and he’d encountered Hydra agents on several occasions who tried to trick him with their S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms, so these might be more of the same...

He’d made a choice and trusted that CIA agent. If she’d sent him into a trap, he was fucked. He’d known that going in, and now that he’d made it back across Asia to the middle of the frakking Gobi desert, he might as well see this through.

The portly man was shouting again, and the enthusiastic agent behind him was jabbing him even harder with the gun barrel. If Clint didn’t make up his mind now, they were going to decide for him. He preferred death to being unmade, tortured, manipulated, or used, but if he died now he’d never get a chance to know what that damned cryptic message meant... if it meant anything at all. 

“I won’t ask you again—”

It was the uniforms that made up his mind. They weren’t exactly like the S.H.I.E.L.D. of old, nor were the lanyard things. These guys weren’t HYDRA playing dress-up, trying to fool him. Also, since when did HYDRA ask questions, not identify him on sight, and give him a chance to explain himself before they opened fire (or tried to incapacitate him).

“My name is Clinton Francis Barton—”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the armor-wearing guards open her mouth in what was probably a gasp of shock. One of the other guards’ weapons wavered, while a third guard steadied his rifle looking even more eager to shoot. 

Clint pressed on, trying to keep himself calm, relaxed, slow-moving. He began to set down the bow and arrow as he lowered himself to his knees, crossing his ankles behind his back. “—code name, Hawkeye, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, Level 7, Service Number Seven-Delta-Seven-Four-Charlie-Tango-Fiver-Zero-Bravo-Alpha-Niner.” He paused, taking a shuddering breath as he let the bow and arrow fall from his fingertips and began inching his hands up so he could interlace his fingers behind his head. “I can’t answer the question because I didn’t hear it—”

The short, portly guy’s face reddened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Clint pushed on, not losing the momentum he’d gained so far.

“I’m deaf. It might not be in my service record. It wasn’t in the S.H.I.E.L.D. files Nat dumped on the internet, but I’m deaf. And I’ve only got one hearing aid at the moment, and it’s not really working, so please... _Please_ understand I’m not trying to resist or be stubborn or fuck with you. If I can’t see your lips, I definitely can’t understand your questions and if you’re standing behind me, I probably won’t realize you said anything.” He paused for a second, considered, and added, “Speech reading isn’t 100%, so if you want to be sure I understand, I would recommend an ASL interpreter.” Well it was out there, and they could use the information against him as they saw fit.

The gun jabbed against the back of Clint’s head, hard. The force of it actually knocked him off balance enough that he had to flail his arms to counterbalance. It wasn’t much, but the sudden movement was enough to make several of the guards tighten their aim at him. 

“If you’re saying something, I can’t hear you. I swear. I’m sorry,” Clint pleaded.

“Bullshit!” a man with narrow features and close-cropped hair exclaimed as he stepped into Clint’s field of vision. 

He looked vaguely familiar, like Clint might have run into him before, but if Clint was right, the guy wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time. 

“Barton was a fucking traitor and an asshole and he’s dead. Died in that messy clusterfuck of a dust up between Hydra and the U.N. Taskforce last June,” they guy continued. 

He’d been wondering how they were spinning that, they being everyone after him and that being his too-close brush with death in Tashkent. If Hydra’d spread the word that he was dead, that probably explained why easily 2/3s of the teams that had come for him since he’d left the hospital had been HYDRA.

“You can prove my identity. Take a DNA sample. And I’m not Hydra. I was never Hydra. I’ve always been loyal—” his voice hitched and he broke off, because that was the root of the problem, wasn’t it? Try as might, he hadn’t always been loyal. Loki had taken him, unmade him, controlled him, and used Clint’s knowledge of S.H.I.E.L.D. to kill thousands of people, had made Clint kill dozens of his colleagues, and Clint had set up the attack that led to Phil’s death. He hadn’t proved Phil in that moment. Loki’s will in his mind had seen Phil as a threat, a huge threat, a target to be eliminated... and if it bad been him against Phil, he couldn’t say with any confidence that he wouldn’t have tried to kill him—that he wouldn’t have forced Phil to end his life. 

Someone was yelling. Maybe several someones. The vague, muffled rumble of arguing voices prodded at the edge of his perception. Background noise he didn’t have time to sort out. He hadn’t counted on this, hadn’t thought this through, what it would be like, what it would mean to come back to the heart of S.H.I.E.L.D., still branded a traitor—forever branded a traitor—and face everyone. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been at the Triskelion or on the Helicarier since the Battle of New York. They had all been hostile... and that was before Hydra reared its ugly heads. 

_It’s not your fault_ , Natasha’s voice reassured. 

“How did you find this place?” A young woman—very young, too young, but with eyes that told the story of how much she’d endured. Her attitude was refreshing. She looked at Clint when she spoke, she was serious and kept her weapon trained on Clint, but appeared genuinely curious and willing to hear him out. 

“I got a message asking me to come here,” Clint answered. 

His response seemed poised to kick off a new round of shouting and debate, when out of Clint’s peripheral vision someone else stepped into the room.

“I sent for him,” Melinda May said confidently, signing as she spoke, her voice and eyes stern in that way they’d been since Bahrain. She was different though, changed since he’d last seen her, but then again they all were. 

The portly guy looked like he was going to object, but May just raised an eyebrow, and he stopped. 

“The director needs him. I asked him to come here. We can trust him,” she continued.

The portly guy said something Clint couldn’t catch, but it seemed to involve something about “orientation” and the word triggered something in the back of his mind that made an icy shiver race up his spine. 

“You’re not putting Barton through orientation, not now anyway. Not yet,” her tone was final. “Thank you for coming,” May continued, addressing Clint. “I know you were taking a huge risk by coming here and I want to thank you for the care you took in ensuring you weren’t followed.”

“Thanks,” Clint said at last, realizing May’s thanks were genuine. It had taken him a while, five weeks, maybe more? He’d been doing a lot of dodging and hiding that made keeping track of time a little difficult. Besides, he hadn’t been on a timetable, at least as far as he knew. “If you guys really are the new S.H.I.E.L.D., I gotta commend you. It’s a real mess out there.”

May nodded.

“Though I gotta say I’m not sure what S.H.I.E.L.D. would want with me. Director Fury never trusted me after New York, and I gotta say, if you lured me here just to do what the CIA or Army or Hydra would have done, I’ll take exception. Violently,” he added. “If you just want information about S.H.I.E.L.D., I’ll be happy to share what I know. I know some things got left out of Nat’s info dump, and I trust you, but I’ll warn you, most of my intel’s a few years out of date. Fury had me out of the loop for a long time.”

“I promise you, I didn’t bring you in to use you or kill you. If you can’t do what I’m asking, you’re free to go.”

“I am?” Clint asked, surprised. 

“He is?” the young woman with bangs asked. She quickly caught May’s eye and the two of them had a conversation in eyebrows that seemed to satisfy her.

The dude with the close-cropped hair and the portly guy were both shocked though, and the situation threatened to descend into chaos. The agent standing behind Clint smacked him in the back of the head again with the gun barrel. He really didn’t want to get shot, especially not without knowing the answer. So he hedged his bets and spoke up. “I don’t want to cause any internal troubles for you, but I have to say, you really did know what to put in a cryptic message to get me to come here. Before anyone gets too trigger happy, what did it mean?”

“What did what mean?” the young woman with bangs asked. 

“May’s message said that Director Coulson needed me...” Clint started. 

The young agent’s eyes went wide distracting Clint so he almost missed that someone else had entered the hangar space coming from the same direction as May. 

“She probably meant exactly what she said.”

Clint heard the words and even muffled and distorted through the crappy hearing aid, he would have known that voice anywhere. But it couldn’t be. He blinked, blinked again, because his eyes were confirming what his ear picked up and standing in front of him signing, “I’m sorry,” was Phil Coulson.

“You’re dead,” Clint spoke and signed, stomach churning with fear. He wanted to believe. Hell even if it was a clone or a robot or just a damn doppelganger, he was going to be hard pressed to not respond positively. He _wanted_ Phil to be alive. Not even to absolve himself for the role he played in Phil’s death, but for Phil, for the world. Because a world with Phil Coulson was infinitely better than one without. 

“I was dead. I’m not dead anymore,” Phil signed. “I’m sorry I didn’t find you. My memories were altered and then I was too scared. I don’t know if you can forgive me, but I’m glad you came.”

“Forgive you? I helped Loki. I—killed you,” Clint countered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t raise that staff. You didn’t have control. You had no choice. I know what it’s like, Clint, to have someone else, something else in your mind, making you do things, I know what it’s like to have the decisions taken out of your hands to hurt people you never wanted to hurt because someone else made the choice and used you to do it. I’m happy I’m not dead, but I am pissed at Fury for telling all of you I was dead and keeping it a secret when I came back, especially since he did the whole thing against my express request.” Clint noticed Phil had stopped speaking and was just signing, careful to keep his hands where only Clint and maybe May and the younger woman could see.

Clint cocked his head to the side, eyebrow raised in question. He didn’t know who else in the room could sign, and he didn’t want to give away Phil’s secrets. 

“It’s a long story,” Phil replied, speaking again. “Agent Triplett, please release Mr. Barton and lower your weapon.

Clint felt the sudden absence of gun barrel and chanced a glance over his shoulder, nodding in thanks at the tall agent he saw there, realizing he’d met the guy before. “You were one of Garrett’s guys.”

“Please don’t remind me,” Triplett answered, shuddering noticeably. “I’m still kicking myself for not figuring out the asshole was Hydra and crazy. He’s dead now, your boy Coulson vaporized him.”

Clint noticed the phrasing and wondered if Triplett had figured it out. His relationship with Phil was just one more thing that had been conveniently left out of S.H.I.E.l.D.’s files. There was no censure or disapproval in Triplett’s expression though, just the same sort of hero worship he’d seen Phil direct toward Captain America. So Clint nodded in thanks and turned back to the rest of the room.

“I didn’t vaporize him, technically, more like explosively liquefied.” Phil smiled sheepishly. If he hadn’t been signing, Clint knew he would have had his hands stuffed in his pockets.

It was such a _Phil_ thing to say, Clint couldn’t help to smile, laugh, the sound emerging from his throat as a harsh bark. His chest tightened, his lungs catching, gut clenching with a feeling of love and life and hope that he hadn’t felt since sometime on that day the Tesseract had brought Loki back to Earth.

“Okay everyone, clear out, let’s give the Director and Agent Barton a little time,” May spoke and signed. 

Clint was vaguely aware of movement behind and around him as several of the agents vacated quickly, the portly man resisting more than the others arguing with May about something to do with Clint, but he didn’t care. He only had eyes for Phil.

Phil was smiling at him. He closed the distance between them, held out his hand. “You know, I think it’s safe to get off your knees now.” He extended his hand again, more insistently. 

Clint hesitated, he wanted to take Phil’s hand. Wanted this to be real... But if he reached out and it was just an illusion, his mind playing tricks on him as he died as Hydra hacked his mind. _As Loki took over for good._

“It’s okay,” Phil signed, “I get it you’re scared. I’m scared too. I keep telling myself that you won’t hate me, you’ll forgive me, you’ll understand. But part of me is terrified that you’ll reject me. Either because I let you believe I was still dead or because of what I’ve become.” He regarded Clint for a moment, searching, staring into his soul. “Both of us have changed. We’re not the men we used to be. But I’m still in love with you.” As he spoke he reached out and touched Clint’s cheek with one hand, taking his left hand with the other. 

“Careful,” Clint spoke, “clavicle’s still not 100%.”

Phil tugged Clint’s hand gently and helped him to his feet. “It’s not good for you to be on your knees like that,” he said, his expression dismayed.

“It’s okay, I’m up now,” he answered, every word feeling inadequate. “How is this...? How is any of this possible?” Clint signed not trusting his voice. 

“I _was_ dead. Really dead. They brought me back and when they did, they changed my memories—”

Clint felt himself gasp, but Phil was shaking his head, reassuringly. “I didn’t—Fury may have always been less than comfortable with our relationship, but that was because he thought it fucked the chain of command, not because he disapproved. He would never make me forget you. But there there were reasons, legitimate reasons Fury was afraid to let me see you. It had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me—” 

Phil broke off and glanced over his shoulder. “Melinda cleared her throat, Skye reminded me that we’re in a public area and some stories are... private,” he explained. “Walk with me back to my quarters?”

Clint nodded. 

Phil slid the hand that was resting on his cheek down Clint’s arm to take him by the hand. 

Clint followed.

They sat and talked, Phil explaining about GH325 and alien blood, side effects, and memory modifications. He explained all the pieces that were still fuzzy, the things he’d pieced together, the unknowns he hadn’t even realized were fake or wrong or missing. Phil described feeling like a threat to the people who depended on him, feeling betrayed, not trusting himself, not sure what he would become. He reflected on what it had been like to watch S.H.I.E.L.D. implode from the inside. The horror as they lost more and more. The refusal to give up. His frustration with those who’d fled to the private sector... 

And little by little Clint started to relax, believe. He could see himself in Phil. Rather than being the dangerous, traitorous, tainted one, who couldn’t trust his own mind, they were both changed, manipulated, flawed. They’d been remade and both desperately wanted control over their own destinies.

Finally, Phil admitted, “I wanted to tell you, but even when I didn’t remember anything, I knew something was wrong. I don’t know if it was that understanding, or the memory modification, but it made the need to contact you less intense, more distant. Still I wanted to reach out, despite Fury’s orders, but I didn’t want to hurt you again, not after you’d lost me once. And then... I was afraid I would hurt you. I couldn’t trust myself.”

“And here I thought you’d never trust me,” Clint admitted, and slowly, haltingly, he told Phil his story—how Fury had kept him away from the funeral, shipped him out on longer and more dangerous missions, and how Clint had let him. How he’d been in Afghanistan cut off from the world when S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen, spotted Baron von Striker, and how that knowledge had been the deciding factor in keeping him alive. How he’d fought, searched, nearly died, and kept going. How he’d found Nat. How she’d brought him back to himself. How he’d left a message for Steve Rogers. How he’d found his way here—home.

“I’m glad you and Natasha had some time together,” Phil said his expression completely genuine, never judgmental. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Clint’s, hesitant, testing.

The touch was familiar. Phil tasted like spearmint toothpaste and coffee. His skin was warm and soft, the rasp of stubble under Clint’s hands well-known. With a sigh, Clint let go, licking his way into Phil’s mouth, easing his hands under Phil’s waistband and up under his shirt. It could have been a dream. How long had he wanted this? How many times had he dreamed Phil was still alive? How could he know this wasn’t a delusion—his mind playing tricks on him, showing his deepest desires. 

Clint didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until Phil broke the kiss and pulled back. “No, no, no, it’s not a dream,” he said into Clint’s good ear, “you’re not dreaming.” He kept his eyes fixed on Clint’s even as his hands moved to shed his jacket and tie and unbutton his shirt, tucking up his undershirt until the scar on his chest was revealed. 

It was violent and scary. The raised and puckered mark looked lethal, but Phil took Clint’s hand and pressed it to his chest, against the scar, forcing Clint to feel his heartbeat, the rise and fall of each breath. “I was gone, but I’m back. I’m alive again. And I’m going to do everything in my power to stay with you.” Clint could feel the vibration of each word as he spoke. 

“Everything?” he asked.

“I’m not keeping you a secret, and I’m not giving you up.” Phil regarded him with a moat serious expression and said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard but Fury did make me the new Director, so I’m kind of the boss.”

Clint just laughed. And the damn was broken. The emotions that had been so stopped up, the distance he’d felt the need to place between himself and Phil evaporated. They quickly shed the rest of their clothes and made love on Phil’s unmade bed. 

As they laid back and enjoyed the afterglow, ankles tangled together Clint’s ass aching with a pleasant stretch he hadn’t heard in far too, long, raised his right hand and signed “I love you.” 

Clint signed back. 

“So,” Phil signed and spoke slowly, “Will you stay with me?” He could feel the nuance, the angles, every unasked question lurking just beneath the surface.

“Yes.” 

Maybe, just maybe, Clint had a future after all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART: Found](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605226) by [Zephre (zephrene)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephrene/pseuds/Zephre)




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